Two (or Three) Lefts Make a Right: Francisco Guilledo to Luisito Espinosa
By Emmanuel Rivera, RRT
PhilBoxing.com
Thu, 11 Sep 2025
The Filipino boxing aficionados of old called it Gancho al hígado, luego de izquierda a la cabeza— a hook to the liver, then a left to the head.
It was the favorite punch combination of Francisco Tingson Guilledo, the Filipino Pancho Villa, and one we still see in the squared circle today.
On October 18, 1989, at about the same instant the Great Loma Prieta Earthquake shook the San Francisco Bay Area, Luisito “Lindol” Espinosa toppled the mighty Khaokor Galaxy in his lair at Rajadamnern Stadium in Bangkok, Thailand…with the same punches spiced with a modern twist.
That moment, seared in memory and old newsprint, was retold on March 23, 2024, at the Gala of Champions in the Manila Grand Opera Hotel. Espinosa, reflective yet sharp, described exactly how the left series unfolded against Galaxy— a southpaw, flat-footed, a plodder, but powerful all the same.
“Nakita ko, bukas ‘yung tagiliran niya, at yung mga kamay niya parang pumapaspas lang, tapos nakatayo lang siya nang tuwid. Kaya binato ko yung kaliwang jab…daplis lang pero tinaas pa lalo ‘yung kanan niya kaya pinakawalan ko agad sa atay, sinundan ko pa ng kaliwa ulit papunta sa kanan niyang kukote…
“Ang target ko talaga, panga. Narinig ko siyang umungol, pinaikot ko siya, tapos umabante siya, pilit akong itinutulak sa lubid. Pagpasok niya, nagbitaw ako ng parang kalahating uppercut sa baba niya pero sapul muna ‘yung kaniyang bituka — yun, sapul…boom! Ramdam kong gumuho baga niya, tapos bigla na lang pinunasan niya noo niya at tumirik ang mga mata niya. Doon ko naisip, ay, hindi na ‘to tatayo.”
(I saw his right flank wide open, both his hands pawing, upright, and almost like instinct I jabbed him with my left…it grazed him but his right hand went higher so I drove the left into the liver, then followed with the same hand toward his right temple. The target was his jaw. I heard him grunt, then I spun him. He pushed forward, trying to bully me onto the ropes. He advanced forward, so I tossed a half-uppercut for the chin, but his stomach caught it first— and boom. I felt his lungs deflate. Galaxy wiped his brow, then his eyes rolled back. Right there I knew he wasn’t getting up.)
Long before that spectacular win by Luisito, my father had asked a famed Mexican trainer to teach a then prospect Espinosa that series of punches at Señor Miguel Jara’s famed Star Boxing Gym in Alum Rock, San Jose, circa 1988. The results were fine, devastating. The aftershocks still linger.
“The credit goes to Pancho Villa,” so said my father, Hermie Rivera, the late maker of champions.
Luisito Espinosa versus Khaokor Galaxy, (The Bangkok Post, October 19, 1989).
Luisito Espinosa was a fellow disciple of that punch combo, carrying it into his own world championship nights. In Mexico, the same rhythm became a national signature. Julio César Chávez Sr. built his Hall of Fame career around the punishing body-to-head hook, Marco Antonio Barrera sharpened it into a surgeon’s tool, Juan Manuel Márquez timed it with counterpunching genius, Salvador Sánchez carried the same fluid motion in his short but brilliant career, and Erik “El Terrible” Morales unleashed it with the fearless aggression that once edged out Manny Pacquiao. They all shared the lineage of Villa’s double left, throwing it with pride, not knowing its roots traced back to a Filipino flyweight. The younger generation of fighters, particularly in Mexico, throw this combination often. They’ve made careers out of it, but many have no idea where it truly began.
Source: The Brooklyn Citizen (Brooklyn, New York) • Sun, Feb 1, 1925 • Page 17
The well of inspiration, in my mind’s eye, truly belongs to Pancho Villa, who once told The Brooklyn Citizen in 1925: “My best punch? They is two of them. First I hook to the body, and then with the same movement, I hook to the jaw.”
Born in the Visayas in 1901, Villa was documented as an Iloilo native, though most accounts now suggest he first saw light in La Carlota, Negros Occidental. His life was marked by hardship and hunger. By his teens he had run away from home, scraping meals and fighting to survive. Boxing gave him a way out. Small, wiry, and fast, he carried dynamite fists that became his passport.
The double left— liver first, jaw second— wasn’t just a trick of mechanics. It was born of necessity as well as preference. As Villa explained to The Brooklyn Citizen after upsetting Johnny Buff: “I no step back. I hook him to the chin. Then I know I have him whipped.”
Johnny Buff was the first to fall to it. Then came Jimmy Wilde, the legendary “Mighty Atom.” Villa said it was the body shot that beat him. “As soon as I hit him with the left, he clinched. I could feel his fingers pressing hard on my arm, as if he was afraid to let go.”
Villa’s hooks left marks even tougher fighters couldn’t forget. Canadian great Jimmy McLarnin, who later became a welterweight champion, remembered it with painful clarity. In words preserved by author Peter Heller, McLarnin admitted: “It was a tough fight. On the inside he kept hitting me on the ears. He was a great infighter. I wound up with two black ears. I heard of people winding up with black eyes, but I wound up with two black ears. He was a great little fighter.”
What made Pancho Villa beloved was not just his fighting style but the way he lived. Reporters portrayed him as a whirlwind. One cartoon showed him grinning wide, flanked on one side by sketches of his double left and on the other by his reckless spending. “A free and easy spender, likes to break $1,000 bills at parties,” the caption read.
In his twenties and suddenly wealthy, he blew through more than a quarter of a million dollars. “I live but the once,” he told The Brooklyn Citizen. “I like not the money itself, I like what him buys.” But even with all the flash, he remained a gym rat, drilling that double left that carried him from La Carlota’s sugarcane shadows to Madison Square Garden and The Polo Grounds’ bright lights.
In Mexican gyms, still, the call is drilled the same way…body first, then head. In Filipino gyms, trainers say it in Tagalog or Visayan, but the message is the same.
…Una al hígado, luego arriba…One to the liver, then upstairs. It is Villa’s ghost teaching through calloused mitts.
Pancho Villa did not live long enough to see his legacy fulfilled. In 1925, at just twenty-three, he died from complications of an infected tooth only ten days after his fight against Jimmy McLarnin on July 4th, 1925 at the Oaks Ball Park in Emeryville, California. But the imprint of his style— especially that double left— has never been forgotten.
When young Filipino, Mexican, American fighters, one and all, throw the left hook to the body and double it to the head, they are not just imitating a series of blows. They are calling back the ferocious Little Brown Doll from the Philippines who became the first Filipino and Asian world champion.
Greatness often hides in the smallest things…a quick shift of the hips, a bend of the waist, a second punch when one would suffice, the courage not to step back when everyone expects you to retreat.
Villa’s double left was more than a punch. It was a philosophy…A strike to open the door, another to claim destiny.
Sources, Credits and Recommended Readings:
• This article contains selected excerpts, quotations, images, and archival references used under the Fair Use provisions of Section 107 of the United States Copyright Act. These materials are presented for educational, scholarly, and cultural preservation purposes. Every effort has been made to properly attribute sources and limit use to what is necessary to honor the historical and cultural narrative.
• The Brooklyn Citizen (Brooklyn, New York) • Sun, Feb 1, 1925 • Page 17
• The Bangkok Post, October 19, 1989
• Peter Heller’s In This Corner…! Forty-Two World Champions Tell Their Stories was first published in 1973. Book was reissued in paperback by Da Capo Press in 1994 (ISBN 9780306806032).
Click here to view a list of other articles written by Emmanuel Rivera, RRT.
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