Boxing's return a resounding success
| • | Viloria victorious in debut, but Salud suffers rare loss |
By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Staff Writer
If you closed your eyes, you could almost hear the echo of Hawai'i's boxing heydays. For two spirited hours inside the Hawai'i Convention Center yesterday afternoon the all-but-forgotten roar was brought back to professional boxing here.
And, attracted by the debut of Olympian Brian Viloria and return of Jesus Salud, so was a thunderous, foot-stomping crowd. The nearly 2,500 in attendance for this Tom Moffatt card produced decibel levels not heard in 15 years or more.
It was as if time had been turned back to a period when the sport was a staple on the local sporting scene, not an endangered species. Back to a day when Hawai'i turned out a series of exciting fighters and crowds that came out to back them.
Back to the 1970s or, more appropriately given the size of the venue (3,500 seats), the days before that when boxing called the old Civic Auditorium on King Street home. Minus the ever-present clouds of smoke, of course.
"I tell you that crowd, all the noise, it got my heart pumping again," sighed veteran trainer Pete Jhun, who worked Salud's corner. "I didn't know if I'd ever hear that kind of a crowd here again. It has been a long time."
"It brought back the feeling of the old days," said Bob Mielke, who fought in the Civic as a junior middleweight.
"It was loud like an Olympics crowd," Viloria said.
For a sport that had been attracting turnouts averaging 500 or so the past few years, when there were cards to be found, and not enough of a gate to pay the electric bill, this was indeed a remarkable sight to behold.
All the more so for the time of the day (3 p.m.) to accommodate ESPN2, which wanted an East Coast audience, and at the premium prices being charged (most seats were in the $45-$100 range).
And it was clear that Viloria, who impressively hammered his way to a one-sided unanimous decision, did not want to disappoint his newfound following, going all out for the knockout of the unsinkable — at least inside the four scheduled rounds — Ben Jun Escobia.
In fact, it was probably the eagerness to please that cost Viloria his best shot at taking out Escobia. In turning it loose to give the chanters of "Bri-an, Bri-an" the knockout they sought, Viloria went back to the head and away from the withering body shots that might have eventually dropped his opponent.
"It was a learning experience for Brian," said his manager, Gary Gittelsohn. "I think we all came away from this one learning a lot."
Not the least of which is that with the rise of Viloria the soul of boxing again stirs in Honolulu.
