ANA MARIA TORRES W10 JACKIE NAVA (plus weekend wrap)

The big hits of last weekend’s boxing, for me anyway, were Mexican female superstars Ana Maria Torres and Jackie Nava, who staged their second thrilling fight in three months. The first fight ended in a draw, but Torres won Saturday’s rematch by unanimous decision, coming on strongly in the last two rounds to put the issue beyond doubt.
 
Torres, 31, moved up in weight from the 115-pound division to take on the very popular 122-pounder Nava, also 31, in these much anticipated bouts.
 
Nava looked the stronger woman at a weight of 120 pounds in the first fight last April. On Saturday the match was made at 118 pounds, for the WBC’s female silver championship belt. It was immediately noticeable that Torres could match Nava for strength this time.
 
The fight was fought on such a high level and with such intensity that the rounds seemed to flash by. Both women showed enormous heart, toughness and determination. Torres bled from the nose from the third round, but by the later rounds Nava was bruised under the right eye, and Nava’s nose streamed blood in the last two rounds, leaving “La Princesa Azteca” looking a sorry sight by the final bell.
 
In a fight such as this, the winner can be the boxer who stays that little bit steadier and keeps a higher level of concentration, which Torres managed to do. Any error of judgement is quickly punished at this level but to me Nava was the one making more of those little mistakes, perhaps an over-ambitious hook thrown from too far back, a little slowness in getting the gloves back into position after making an attack.
 
Torres, as in the first fight, kept firing back after getting caught, and her punches seemed a little more precise although Nava was scoring as well. At one point Nava nodded to Torres in acknowledgement after missing a bit wildly with a left uppercut and getting countered by a stiff jab, as if to say: “Good move there, Ana.”
 
I thought the fight had turned Nava’s way when she landed some heavy right hands in the eighth, and for the first time Torres’s technique seemed to be falling apart. Yet Torres pulled herself together and came back faster and harder in the ninth, really drilling in the punches, backing up a tiring Nava and for the first time actually outclassing her opponent. All three judges had Torres winning by 96-94, which looked a fair assessment.
 
Nothing else on the weekend came close to matching the drama of the female superfight.
 
Beibut Shumenov had a longer night than I thought he would when stopping Danny Santiago in the ninth round of their light-heavyweight title fight. Santiago, 38, and boxing for the first time in 14 months, gave it a good try, gamely taking the fight to Shumenov and even making the “bring it on” gesture although taking a pasting. I thought that Shumenov could have launched his big barrage of punches a few rounds earlier, but trainer Kevin Barry feels that the Kazakh boxer is at the stage where he needs the motivation of the bigger fights (while also pointing out that Santiago was in probably the best shape of his life). A fight between Shumenov and Jean Pascal would be intriguing but the venue could be the sticking point: Barry told me that Shumenov emphatically does not want to go to Pascal’s home territory of Quebec.
 
Brian Magee wasn’t exciting but he got the job done, picking up the WBA’s interim 168-pound title by easily outpointing local boxer Jaime Barboza in Costa Rica. The much more experienced and naturally bigger Magee seemed a bit wary of the wild right hands that Barboza kept lobbing at him. Magee scored well to the body from out of his southpaw stance and controlled almost every round, but it was a desultory bout and the crowd’s silence was mute testimony to Barboza’s ineffectiveness.
 
On Friday Night Fights, Lamont Peterson was simply the tougher, better fighter in a dominant display against Victor Cayo in their IBF junior welter title eliminator. Cayo’s flashy, hands-down style and slapdash punches can get results at the lower level, but Peterson was too much fighter for him. Peterson must have known he was comfortably in front on points but nevertheless went all out to force a stoppage in the last round, hammering a tiring Cayo with some big right hands. It was surprising that Cayo, claiming a blow to the back of the head, took a knee to be counted out with the fight almost over. My first thought was that Cayo had quit, but Teddy Atlas was probably right in suggesting that Cayo had become disorientated from taking several flush shots in the 12^th. Peterson did what I like a fighter to do when the bell goes for the last round — he left nothing to chance and went out to finish the fight in style.