46-year-old Hector "Macho" Camacho (79-5-2, 37 KO's) stopped Perry Ballard (20-2, 15 KO's) in a strange affair Friday night at the Reliant Arena in Houston, Texas during South Coast Promotions inaugural boxing card in the Bayou City. The former ring legend was a mere shadow of his self and the bout against Ballard, who owned something called the WBE Championship, was a weird fight from the very beginning.
Camacho controlled the first round as Ballard had no clue as to how to fight a southpaw. Ballard attempted to quit claiming he had a broken jaw after receiving a headbutt from Camacho in the second round. The fight was full of clinches, hitting, holding and grappling and was, at times, hard to even watch as Ballard mugged, postured and gestured for the crowd in attendance. He just couldn't do much else aside from landing a couple of uppercuts in the sixth round. Camacho won every stanza and finally ended the macabre dance 21 seconds into the seventh round with some jolting uppercuts that prompted Ballard's corner to finally throw in the towel.
Christy "The Coal Miners Daughter" (47-5-3, 31 KO's) and Valerie "The Wolfe" Mahfood 19-14-4, 9 KO's) fought to a fierce 8 round draw in the best fight of the evening. The ring action was intense as Mahfood assumed the role of aggressor from the start and the smaller Martin moved and boxed for the entire 8 rounds, landing clean and hard shots on her bigger and stronger opponent who pressed the fight the entire way. Martin proved she still has "The Right Stuff" under the pressure Mahfood put on her and soaked up at least a half dozen very heavy right hands from Valerie throughout the course of the hard fought contest. The crowd was really into this one as both combatants fought bell to bell in the entertaining scrap. The draw was, for the most part, well-received by the audience though the Martin camp thought their fighter clearly won the bout.
On the under card:
Hard-punching middleweight Omar Henry wowed the crowd in his professional debut as he obliterated Terrance Anderson in a minute and a half in the opening round. Henry leaped into action at the opening bell and dropped Anderson with a left-right salvo and then sent him off to Sominex city via a brutal left hook, right cross combination that put Anderson into dreamland. Henry is trained by the famed trainer of champions Ronnie Shields and Jay Johns and is a fistic prospect that certainly bears keeping an eye on in the future.
Local favorite Guadalupe Martinez (16-1, 9 KO's) won a majority decision over Taronze Washington (9-10, 5 KO's) in a hard-fought super welterweight scrap that saw Martinez rake the body time and time again with hard left hooks as Washington was able to land a number of clean head shots on the persistent Martinez who would not be denied a victory this night.
Heavyweights Justin Jones (3-0-1, 2 KO's) and Homer Fonseca (4-2-1, 2 KO's) fought to a lively 4 round draw. Jones obviously has some technical skills, but could not keep the overweight Fonseca off of him, despite landing a number of booming jabs, right hands and left hooks off the head of Homer. Fonseca hurt Jones late and had him holding onto the ropes for support at the final bell. The crowd really enjoyed this one as both young men gave their all in the ring.
Light welterweight John Rarden (10-0, 5 KO's) outfought Derrick Moon (12-21-1, 2 KO's) to take a unanimous 6 round decision.
This was the inaugural card for promoters John and Donna English of South Coast Promotions and Rosemary Acosta-Clark and it turned out to be a terrific night of boxing and also had some MMA fights included in the action packed evening. In a nice gesture, one dollar from each ticket purchased was donated to the International Boxing Hall of Fame in Canastota, New York, which is a great way to give back to the sport that we all love that has done so much good for so many people.
Until next time, see you at the fights!