HARRY JOE YORGEY KO9 RONALD HEARNS

Careful matchmaking can cover up serious flaws in a fighter but in the case of Ronald Hearns, the secret is out. He is athletic and has nice boxing ability, but if he gets hit by anything approaching a hard shot he is likely to fall apart.

Harry Joe Yorgey is a competent boxer but has never been considered a seriously hard hitter, yet, in the special edition of ShoBox on Saturday, he was made to look like a Kelly Pavlik-type puncher as he knocked out Hearns in the ninth round of the scheduled 12-round junior middleweight bout.

It was alarming to see Hearns down three times and getting wobbled almost every time he got hit against an opponent chosen for a perceived lack of punching power.

By the middle rounds, his father, the legendary Thomas Hearns, was on his feet at ringside, signalling to his son to stick out the jab and move around, but the damage had been done and the younger Hearns was on borrowed time.

Hearns had started off well enough, following the jab with some quick right hands, but there was a foretaste of things to come when Yorgey shook him with a right hand in the third. I thought it was ominous the way that Hearns faltered from the effects of what did not look a very hard blow. From then on, Yorgey was fighting like a man who knows it is a matter of time before he knocks his opponent out, as Steve Farhood noted in the commentary — and we’re talking about a boxer with just one stoppage win in his last eight bouts.

I was actually surprised that Hearns lasted as long as he did, the way that he got dropped in the fourth and fifth rounds.

Hearns looked almost out of the fight when he got caught by the right hand again and flopped to the canvas in the fourth, but, after the eight count, he winged punches and managed to knock Yorgey off his feet. Yet although knockdowns had been exchanged, Hearns always looked much the more vulnerable fighter, and when he was dropped face-first from a right hand in the fifth I thought the fight was over.

Somehow Hearns got up and pulled himself together sufficiently to have a couple of good rounds, moving and jabbing, but inevitably he got caught again, and when he crashed down in the ninth there was no coming back.

Many fighters have come back after getting knocked out, but Hearns is 30 and this was a devastating defeat. If he boxes on, any opponent of ambition will be eagerly looking to land something on his chin and, sadly, Hearns has the fragile look of a fighter who could “go” at any time, a knockout victim in waiting.