MIGUEL ACOSTA TKO9 URBANO ANTILLON

Lightning can indeed strike twice — just ask Los Angeles trainer Rudy Hernandez. Last September, Hernandez took his fighter Jose Armando Santa Cruz to Mexico to meet Antonio Pitalua in a lightweight title eliminator. Santa Cruz got flattened in the sixth round in what was considered an upset. On Saturday night, Hernandez was back in Mexico with his other lightweight hope, Urbano Antillon. Lightning struck again as Antillon was crunched in the ninth round by Miguel Acosta, of Venezuela, in their bout for the vacant WBA interim lightweight title in another stunner.

Antillon, the undefeated Mexican-born fighter from Maywood, CA, was fighting his usual forward-moving, constant-pressure style, but Acosta was fast, awkward and unorthodox — and also a far more dangerous puncher than I think any of us could have realised.

The fight was evenly balanced on the scorecards after eight rounds, but Acosta had demonstrated that he could hurt Antillon when he had the betting favourite almost out on his feet in the fifth round. Antillon seemed to have got himself back together by the ninth, but from the fifth, for me, he always had the look of a fighter who was one punch away from disaster, and in round nine, almost inevitably, he got caught flush on the chin as Acosta brought up a scything right uppercut.

When Antillon went down against the ropes, his body limp and his head flopping to one side, it was obvious the fight was over. Although Antillon got up at the count of nine, he had that worrying, shell-shocked look of a fighter whose senses have been scrambled, and referee Russell Mora was correct to wave the finish after one minute, 37 seconds of the round.

This main event on the latest Top Rank Latin Fury show was an example of why I do not like to miss any boxing show, because one can never be sure what will happen. A normally reliable source who had seen told Acosta told me he didn’t think much of him, but it was surely obvious from the start that the tricky, slippery and hard punching Venezuelan was going to give Antillon a very difficult fight.

Antillon’s body punches weren’t as effective as they usually are because Acosta had a way of twisting and turning, and the Venezuelan boxer’s constant movement and counter punches — plus a fair bit of grabbing — seemed to be keeping Antillon from getting really settled into the fight.

At first I was thinking that Antillon would probably be able to wear his man down, and overpower him eventually.

This train of thought shuddered to a halt in the fifth round, when Acosta started to land the right hand, hard and often and, it seemed, all too easily.

Antillon had his hands up, but Acosta was looping his blows around the side of Antillon’s guard — and hitting him solidly. Antillon looked hurt and confused, even dropping his hands.

I don’t think that Acosta realised how badly he had hurt Antillon, because he backed off. Now, though, instead of it merely being a matter of time before Antillon caught up with his opponent we had a fight that was tilting in the other direction — I scribbled “upset looms!” in my notepad.

More right-hand blasts from Acosta made the sixth another rocky round for Antillon, but he did seem to be forcing his way back by the eighth — only to run into one of the most vivid right uppercuts I can remember seeing, reminding me of the one with which Larry Holmes crumpled a stubborn Mike Weaver in their heavyweight title fight, or, more recently, the uppercut that dramatically changed the course of Chris Eubank’s rematch with Michael Watson, each time late in the 11th round. When fighters get hit like that there just isn’t any coming back, although both Weaver and Watson were allowed to come out for the 12th round — with tragic consequences in Watson’s case.

Acosta had looked dangerous with the right uppercut all through the fight, but he hadn’t landed one exactly right until the fight-ending blockbuster.

I must admit I was very surprised. Antillon had been running over everyone put in front of him, so much so that one tended to overlook a couple of wobbly moments — a flash knockdown against Jose Leonardo Cruz, when he got caught by a right hand late in the second round in June of last year and, much more worryingly, a dreadful second round against fellow-Mexican Ivan Valle, when he was so unsteady that he twice went down without being hit. In those fights, Antillon was able to battle his way back. It looked as if he just might be able to do so against Acosta, too — but then that devastating right uppercut took him out of the fight.

Being wise after the event, there were warning signs in Acosta’s record that should have set alarm bells ringing. Acosta had defeated the local favourite and future world champ Jose Alfaro in Nicaragua, and he had beaten the useful Anges Adjaho — the way that Adjaho collapsed in the ninth round against Antonio DeMarco tended to obscure the fact that for the first eight rounds he had been boxing very well and was in front on two scorecards. More than this, Acosta had not lost in almost six years — and when Venezuelan boxers arrive on the world stage they invariably know how to fight. With hindsight, Acosta really shouldn’t have been as big an underdog as he was.

Yet, all this said, Acosta had not appeared to be a huge puncher, and there was a suspicion that he might not be terribly durable. It looked a fight that Antillon was quite capable of winning, and perhaps he would have won if he hadn’t got caught — but he did get caught, and, refreshingly, he offered no excuses afterwards.

I guess the lesson here is that we should never rush to judgement when a boxer is sight unseen. As commentator Bernardo Osuna reminded us in his closing remarks: “You never know what you’re going to get when you don’t know the fighter.”

How very true.