Wilfred Benitez vs. Nicolino Locche 'June 6, 1976'

I saw, or have seen Locche fight:


Rambaldi
Ribeiro
Dilella
Carlos Ortiz
Fuji
Acevedo
Pruitt
Barrera
Adigue
Antonio Ortiz
Cervantes Both
Fraser
Morgan
Corpas
Ferrat
Hernandez
Henrique
Huertas
Mercado
Trujillo


In some of those fights he was brilliant. In many others he did absolutely nothing but show up for a paycheck and a decision which was obviously predetermined.

 

That's some collection.

 

I dont own those. Ive just seen those fights.

 

Well as far as I know not many of 'em are readily available nowadays. I may be wrongly assuming but I don't get the impression you're old enough to have been there

 

If youve ever seen his fight with Fraser, imagine that without the offense by Locche. That was pretty indicative of his style when he had his friends officiating. He would mug, and clown, and generally try to make the other guy look bad or foolish without doing much offensively. Because of that I have a hard time ranking him.

When he was really letting it all hang out using all of his tools he was fantastic but more often than not he was a stinker.

The best Locche you would have ever seen was in training. When he was really trying to get into condition in training he was awsome. He would make his sparring partners look ridiculous.

 

Oh! Well thank you :hey

 

Locche's performances against Hernandez and Fuji are the most indicative of his prime form in my estimation. We must not forget that he was around 30 years old when he was finally given a title shot with a hundred professional bouts behind him.

Those early title fights of his showed him focused and willing to win in emphatic fashion, more so than some of his later efforts.

 

Irrelevant really,...Locche was a genius.

 

Clearly Fuji was his best showing. Such a strong, dangerous man and Locche frustrated him so much and made punching such a futile exercise for Fuji that he gave up.

Talk about disarming a puncher. Fuji tried his wildest, his smartest and his hardest. Just couldn't get off and when he did he hit thin air.

 

Its never irrelevent when a guy cant lose at home. Gift decisions are not irrelevant. Thats the exact attitude that allowed Argentine officials to get away with giving away those gifts to guys like monzon, locche, and bonavena just to placate hero worshipping fans.

 

Would have been interesting to see Locche's early fights.

He looked faster, with much better movement and fitter against Ortiz.

 

Acording to boxrec. He fought Sebastiao Nascimento on 6/29.1963. Winning a 15 round decision for the South American lightweight title.

 

Benitez was fresher, naturally bigger (didn't mean much against Locche at his best but here? Means a lot IMO) and as he carried his power up to 11 stone he'd be the harder puncher here as well (again, didn't mean a huge amount against Locche at his best as Hernandez found out after dropping him but in terms of eye catching work and an aged Locche, means more IMO) so I'd expect Benitez to do the better work in a pretty dull fight but one that would provide enough work of interest for the aficionados.