Undefeated 53-0 Italian Nino La Rocca vs 32-3 South African Southpaw Harold Volbrecht - 1983-10-30

LaRocca had a deeply padded record but can’t deny that he showed some great talent. Just seemed to rely too much on his athleticism and was content to showboat more often than necessary. Very arrogant but he was an exceptionally fast fighter.

 

From what I remembered from that fight with Laing it was a bizarre fight where they were doing everything they can to ensure that the hometown fighter (LaRocca) was the winner such as extending the round a minute longer to tire out Laing.

 

Volbrecht was always an interesting fighter to watch. Good, slippery defence and a big punch. His downfall here was his low workrate and the fact that Nino had fast reflexes. He wasn't going to catch him with one of those winging hooks easily. I think Volbrecht would have been better advised to throw more punches to the body to slow his elusive opponent down. Volbrecht later went on to be a successful trainer nobably of Corrie Sanders. That little guy with the salt and pepper hair and moustache always with Corrie was Harold Volbrecht.

 

LaRocca headed to Italy around the same time as Kalambay. I've always thought it was interesting that Italian promotion threw their full weight behind him and really built up the hype while Kalambay was given little support or notice right up to winning a world title. Talk about backing the wrong horse.

Nino did a great Ali/Legra impression against journeyman and cans though, so I guess it was a case of being dazzled by the flashier style. Their matchmaking did himm no favouris, though he did have a little run against fringe contenders/faded former contenders...Steve Gregory, Bobbie Joe Young, Pete Ranzany, Jerry Cheatham, Manning Galloway, Harold Volbrecht, Giles Elbilia...but there seemed to be the impression he was being overprotected for some reason relative to the hype. Likely his team had an idea that he had some durability/mentality issues and kept him away from even the more dangerous Euro based Welters like Jones, Honeyghan, Rosi.

The Curry loss seemed to break him, he folded far too easily in that fight, and that later bout with Laing was a circus between two faded, wasted talents at that point.

 

that's a good question Russell. Honestly, I'm not sure. They both had similar strengths and weaknesses, but I'd need to rewatch them to really properly compare. the fact Laing was so lacking in dedication adds in an extra difficulty in assessing him. I think he was probably the more athletically talented of the two (if in good shape), and he could put together some impressively fast counters and combinations, but I think his style was less refined and disciplined than Nino's, who was a more generic Ali clone with the usual issues that come with that. Laing took even more risks with his defensive style.. standing in front of opponents, chin not tucked, baiting punches with hands below chest height...

The issues holding Nino back were probably just mainly to do with not being tough or durable enough to have success with the '60s Ali style against the top Welters, nothing more esoteric than that; he crumbled against Curry as soon as Donald really got the range on him.

whereas Laing seemed like if he'd been more committed to the sport, he probably would have needed to put in some serious work refining his style in a more pragmatic direction. I'd imagine Duff's team did try with him, but probably realised it was a lost cause getting him to put the work in quite early on.

 

Presuming they had the same management/promotion behind them, it’s not an inexpensive thing to build a fighter to world championship level (or contention).

Don’t fool yourself thinking every card makes a profit, especially once you get a fighter to a point where he has a good record (people want to get paid to come in as an opponent to a rising prospect or contender) and you’re exporting opposition from across the continent and even around the world.

In the UK, there’s enough domestic competition at various levels to move a guy up through the ranks to at least within reach of world level without having to fly them in (and serious opponents won’t do it if they’re not going to get a week or more in country to adapt and shake off jet lag), much less pay them the going rate (or more if your guy is exceptional). In mainland Europe, it’s tougher because there’s less of an opponent pool with which to build, and nobody’s coming from the U.S. or South Africa in this case, to fight a guy who’s undefeated with 50-plus fights on the cheap.

Not to mention the cost of getting your prospect the level and amount of top sparring needed to be ready for those fights and improving for the next level. Unless your guy is an exceptional draw, the money you sink in getting him there is an investment that you hope pays off when he becomes a champion and the purses increase exponentially. And two guys from Africa who don’t probably know anyone in Italy aren’t going to automatically start filling arenas (even small ones) every time they fight … nobody knows who they are, went to school with them, heard about their exploits like you might a hometown guy, and so forth.

I have zero doubt that they sunk a ton into LaRocca with little return on investment.

(It’s also why prospects who fall just short end up taking a lot of losses on the back end — you hope your guy knocks off a contender and gets you back in contention, but you’re also trying to recoup something of what you invested. It’s easy to sink six figures on bringing a guy up and you’re getting back maybe 33% or so between manager and promoter off those purses, which is going to take a lot of fights to add up to what you put into it. Never mind that the manager in many cases with a real prospect is also taking on the expense of traveling the guy around to spar at other gyms or paying those sparring partners out of pocket, and you may also be feeding and housing him at least at first — doubt two Africans show up in Italy able to support themselves as they climb the ladder from the start.)

Point being, it’s a lot of money to invest to get even one fighter to that point. To do two is a heavy lift unless that manager/promoter are well connected and have other more established guys making top dollar, which is being reinvested in the up-and-comers.

 

Good points. I'm not sure how many decent sized stables/promoters there were in Italy at the time, or quite what the extent of the resources they were operating with. Italy did have a decent flow of fighters back then challenging at Euro level (with the occasional world title challengers and champs coming off of that), but definitely not as deep as the UK pool, plus the bigger mainland euro countries could be quite insular themselves until they felt fighters were ready to step up for a euro title challenge, so you weren't necessarily getting a lot of cross-country experience early.

 

Nino was good. He faced an absolute prime Curry and lost. No shame in that really. he did better against Curry then McCrory did.

Volbrecht was a favorite son of the WBA. South Africa had a lot of influence with the WBA,

This should have been it for Volbrecht but he somehow got a shot at the vacant WBA title over three years later when he was stopped by Mark Breland

I started getting KO Mag early in 1984 and they didn't have Volbrecht in their Welterweight top 10 much between 1984-1987.