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Monday, July 17, 2006
Sayson: Hands of Stone dilemma: Can’t hit, gets hit
By Homer Sayson
Second overtime
CHICAGO – Randy Suico arrived in Las Vegas looking to fulfill a childhood dream. After 14 years of fighting, eight of them as a distinguished pro, he was determined to win a world title, and secure for himself a place at the very peak of pro boxing’s mountain – a world only champions know.
The 5-foot-6 Juan Diaz, WBA’s lightweight king, seemed like a perfect foe for the towering 5-9 Suico. Although unbeaten, Diaz doesn’t have knockout power, scoring only 14 KOs in 29 wins. Nicknamed the Baby Bull, Diaz likes to keep charging, a tendency that leaves him dangerously vulnerable to Randy’s dreaded 1-2 punch. Simply put, Diaz was a shorter, easy target to hit. Or so it seemed.
But much to Suico’s chagrin, Diaz was more elusive than a crafty fugitive. He was there all right, in Suico’s face all night, but amazingly, Diaz couldn’t be hit. According to compubox numbers, Suico landed just 98-of-840 punches for a timid 12 percent accuracy rate. Randy also unleashed 555 power punches, but only 85 made contact.
Round after agonizing round, Randy’s world title hopes fizzled in a blaze of missed punches. And while he kept missing, Diaz kept landing combination after combination. Diaz’s astonishing connect rate prompted referee Joe Cortez to visit the Suico corner in the fifth round and warned of an early stoppage.
Refusing to let go of a dream, Suico’s hopes attacked his doubt, throwing uppercuts and left hooks with more conviction. He tagged Diaz with some heavy blows in the seventh round, showing signs of life after losing the previous six rounds in the unofficial scorecard of HBO’s Harold Lederman.
But in the eighth, Diaz went back to work again, bulldozing his way inside Suico’s weakened defenses. It was perfect set-up for a glorious ninth round, where a barrage of rights and lefts finally convinced the referee to intervene at the 2:06 mark. All told, Diaz hit Suico with 352-of-635 punches, a ridiculous 55 percent accuracy clip. In defending his belt for the fifth time, Diaz nailed Suico with 247-of-408 power punches (61 percent).
Diaz has a full load of undergraduate studies at the University of Houston. He wants to be a lawyer someday, and he sure carried himself like one last night – shrewd, opportunistic and cold blooded.
He was also arrogantly confident, and even in the welter of Suico’s courageous seventh-round awakening, Diaz never showed the slightest, slimmest, faintest hint of self-doubt.
I called Suico’s hotel room two hours after the fight but he was still at Valley Hospital for a routine medical checkup. But I spoke with his trainer Juanito Ablaca who conceded.
“He was tough and he had very good defense. Suico hit him with body blows but Diaz was so slippery, he moved back and slipped sideways when Randy tried to string two to three punches together,” Ablaca explained.
When it was all over, Randy stood in his corner dejected, his soft limpid eyes almost turned liquid with tears. He was the face of frustration, a sadness that adjectives cannot fully capture.It’s hard to sugarcoat a bitter defeat that was as complete and as thorough as this was one was. That Mandaue City should be proud of a 26-year-old son who showed world-class toughness in the face of world-class adversity.
In the biggest fight of his career, Randy threw as many punches as his energy would let him. And he threw them as hard as he possibly could. Still, Kumong Bato came up way way short. Maybe, the world championship belt was never meant to be.
(homsay@hotmail.com)
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (July 17, 2006 issue)
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