COMMISSIONER’S CORNER
Gomez’s right eye became Sanchez’s primary target.
Top 10 and climbing fast. During the remainder of the year, he solidified his number one status with seven more victories. His record was now 33-1-1. On February 2, 1980 – one week after his 21st birthday – Sanchez faced Lopez for the Ring and WBC featherweight titles in Phoenix, Arizona. Sanchez won the crown with a one-sided 13th- round stoppage. On his way to victory, he looked like the great fighter he was turning into. That same year, Gomez fought four times. Three of the bouts were title defenses. One was a featherweight elimination against unbeaten Nigerian Eddie Ndukwu. At the weigh-in for that bout in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Gomez stepped on and off the scale quickly. Then he drank some fruit juice. Ndukwu’s camp insisted he get back on the scale. When he did, he was overweight. A discussion between the camps took place, Ndukwu was paid extra money, and Gomez’s weight was listed at 126 pounds. Gomez stopped Ndukwu in the fourth round. In his three other bouts that year, none of Gomez’s opponents lasted past the sixth round. Since the draw in his pro debut, he had fought 31 times. He had kept his promise: The judges were not needed in any one of them. By the start of 1981, Gomez knew a title shot was looming against Sanchez. He was bigger than life in Puerto Rico and was enjoying his fame. In June, he faced lightly-regarded Raul Silva in a stay-busy fight. Gomez won by a third- round knockout. While Gomez partied, Sanchez worked on becoming ever better. On March 22, 1981, he stopped contender Roberto Castanon in the 10th round of a one- sided fight in Las Vegas. In 43 bouts, Castanon had lost only once, by second- round knockout to Danny Lopez two years earlier in a world title challenge. At the post-fight press conference for the Sanchez fight, Castanon told me and publisher Bert Sugar, “I see why Sanchez beat Lopez. I know why Sanchez is the champ. He is a great fighter!” At ringside in Vegas that night was
Wilfredo Gomez. After the fight, he and Sanchez pointed at each other. They glared. Promoter Don King smiled. Everyone knew Sanchez-Gomez was next. Almost next. Sanchez wanted to stay sharp. On July 11, at the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles, he took an over-the-weight 10-rounder against contender Nicky Perez. Sanchez toyed with his seasoned opponent, winning all 10 rounds on two of the three scorecards and eight on the third. Finally, the road to Sanchez-Gomez had reached its destination. King put the fight on Friday, August 21, 1981. The site was the Caesars Palace Sports Pavilion. King billed the fight as “The Battle of the Little Giants.” Indeed it was. Sanchez, the champion, was 40-1-1 (30 KOs). Gomez brought a near-perfect 32- 0-1 (32 KOs) record into the fight. When ring announcer Chuck Hull introduced the fighters, Gomez the challenger first, the standing-room-only crowd of around 5,000 was in a frenzy. Many were draped in Mexican flags. Just as many carried Puerto Rican flags and banners. Both fighters weighed in at the featherweight limit of 126 pounds, though the slightly shorter Gomez (at 5-foot-5½, he was perhaps a half inch shorter than Sanchez) was stockier and looked heavier. The disparity was not in their size or weight. It was in their ring persona. Gomez seemed relaxed and overconfident as he smiled at friends sitting ringside. Across the ring, Sanchez was hopping and bouncing around quickly, nonstop, expending what seemed to be a great deal of energy. “He’s like a Mexican jumping bean,” said one reporter. Even during referee Carlos Padilla’s mid-ring instructions Sanchez bounced on his toes and bent from the waist as if slipping punches. Gomez continued wearing a nonchalant look. That look vanished in the first round after he was dropped by a left hook just 1:24 into the fight. During that and
each successive round, Sanchez showed Gomez movement and speed he was unaccustomed to. Even the two or three solid shots Gomez landed seemed to have no effect on the champ. For the next two rounds, Sanchez excelled in every facet of the game. He boxed magnificently. He outslugged Gomez on the inside, something no other opponent had ever been able to do. He even began laying on the ropes and allowed Gomez to throw punches at him. He either blocked or slipped nearly everything Gomez threw. When Gomez did land, Sanchez immediately answered with a counterpunch. By Round 5, Sanchez was in complete command. His left jab was his primary weapon, and he snapped it over and over into Gomez’s puffing face. By Round 6, Sanchez was getting stronger. And sharper. And more daring. He no longer seemed to care if Gomez landed. Whatever Sanchez wanted to do, he did it. The assault continued to ramp up in the next two rounds. Sanchez turned it into a slugging match in the eighth. At one point in that round, he threw three hooks in a row to the body. At the 2:00 mark, he trapped Gomez in a corner and unleashed a volley of around 10 punches to the head. Gomez crumpled in the corner on all fours. When he barely beat the count but staggered as he rose, Padilla stopped the fight. Most likely, he could have done so a few punches earlier, but with a frenzied crowd screaming for Gomez to survive, Padilla let the action continue until the challenger dropped. It was probably a wise move. Sanchez successfully defended his crown three more times over the next year. Tragically, he died on August 12, 1982, when his speeding sports car slammed into the back of a tractor-trailer. He was just 23. We’ll never know how great he could have been. What we do know is that Sanchez was approaching greatness the night he beat another great fighter in Gomez. On that night, Sanchez wasn’t just great. He was an all-time great!
the first and only defeat in his career. It was to countryman Antonio Becerra on a 12-round split decision for the Mexican bantamweight title. The fight took place in Becerra’s backyard of Mazatlan. Following two decision victories, Sanchez fought to a 10-round majority draw against Juan Escobar at the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles. In that hotly contested fight, Sanchez suffered the only knockdown of his career. I was at the Olympic that night to scout 19-year-old sensation Sean O’Grady, who was on the undercard. From where I sat, Sanchez’s trip to the canvas looked more like an off-balance slip, but he went down after a punch from Escobar and referee Dick Young ruled it a knockdown. Without the knockdown, Sanchez would have won the fight. “I needed to improve,” Sanchez told me during a visit to The Ring headquarters in 1981. “I worked hard in the gym. I worked on my movement and sharpened my jab.” Sanchez added trainer Enrique Huerta to his team following his struggle with Escobar and notched five easy victories, closing out 1978 with a second-round knockout. He never looked better. He went into 1979 thinking championship. Gomez, meanwhile, continued to pile up knockouts. After winning the title in 1977, he added one more knockout defense that year. In 1978, he made five defenses – each one by knockout. In 1979, he was 5-0 with five more knockouts. Four were in title defenses, while one was at 126 pounds, as he was starting to talk about challenging featherweight champ Danny “Little Red” Lopez. But while Gomez was starting to talk about a fight against Lopez, Sanchez was in full gear pursuing “Little Red.” Sanchez began 1979 with a third- round knockout. He was in The Ring’s
THE BATTLE OF THE LITTLE GIANTS By Randy Gordon
W ilfredo Gomez was 18 and a skinny 120 pounds when he made his pro debut on November 16, 1974, at Panama City’s Gimnasio Nuevo Panama. It was the opening fight on a card headlined by lightweight champion Roberto Duran in a non-title bout. Gomez fought to a six- round draw against a 2-1 Panamanian named Jacinto Fuentes. “I won that fight,” Gomez told me through his attorney/interpreter Gabriel Penagaricano while visiting The Ring offices years later. “I wanted to fight him again. I decided then and there never to let the judges decide the outcome when I fight.” Gomez won his next four fights by quick knockouts (three in the first round, one in the second), and all but one took place in the same Panama City arena. He returned again for a rematch with Fuentes. This time, Fuentes was out of there before the end of Round 2, a left hook to the liver ending his night,
according to Luis Henriquez, a member of Duran’s team, who was present for both fights. “I loved the way winning by knockout felt,” said Gomez. “It was the only way I wanted to win.” Gomez KO’d his next 10 opponents. He was 15-0-1 with 15 KOs and atop the world’s junior featherweight ratings. At the same time, a 16-year-old Mexican bantamweight by the name of Salvador Sanchez was beginning his career and piling up wins in his country. By the time Gomez had his 15th win (in February 1977), Sanchez was 16-0 (15 KOs). Unbeknownst to either young man, they were on a collision course. Sanchez got to 18-0 (17 KOs) on May 21, 1977, with a fifth-round stoppage of Rosalio Badillo in Mexico City. On that same day in San Juan, Gomez captured the WBC junior featherweight title with a 12th-round knockout of incumbent Dong-Kyun Yum. Four months later, Sanchez suffered
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