Pancho Villa: Greatest Flyweight of 20th Century
By Eddie Alinea
PhilBoxing.com
Sun, 20 Jun 2010
First of a Series
Year 1923 is to be remembered by a pair of significant events that shook the world of politics and sports.
It was on July 23 that year when Mexican revolutionary hero known to his countrymen as a ?Robin Hood? was felled by an assassin in his native town of Parral while enjoying his retirement.
A month and five days earlier, on June 18, Filipino Pancho Villa, Francisco Guilledo in real life, knocked out Welshman Jimmy Wilde in the seventh round at the Polo Grounds in New York to wrest the world flyweight championship, thus, becoming the first from this archipelago and, for that matter, Asia, to be crowned world boxing champion.
Villa reigned as division ruler a little more than a year before joining his namesake and Creator on July 14, 1925, 18 days short of his 24th birthday.
Sixteen years following his death, on October, 1961 to be exact, the Filipino fighter was elevated to the Ring Magazine?s Boxing Hall of Fame.
At the end of the last millennium, Villa was named by the Associated Press the ?Best Flyweight of the Century? in the company of, among others, Sugar Ray Robinson, who earned the accolade ?Best Boxer of the Century,? and Muhammad Ali, named the ?Best Heavyweight.?
Last month, it was the Philippine Sports Hall of Fame?s turn to honor him by enshrining him, along with nine other sports greats, to the Hall.
?A fast, two-fisted battler, an excellent boxer with a stinging left jab, His record was a splendid one,? was how the Ring Magazine, acknowledged as the ?Bible of Boxing,? accorded tribute to Villa in recognizing his greatness.
On that night of June 18, 1923, Villa, who at 22 was only in his third year of fighting in the United States, climbed the ring to the shouts of ?Viva Villa? by the 23,000 souls that filled the Polo Grounds, paying $94,950, one of the biggest in that era but a drop in the bucket compared to what a single promotion nowadays, involving say, Manny Pacquiao, earns.
The Philippines, in those days was still under the American-inspired Commonwealth government, reason why the Americans considered Villa as their own, which the Filipino fighter repeatedly reputed in his years of stay in the land of sugar and honey.
Villa was at his prime when he went to the U.S., earning the reputation as a ?clever, fast puncher with his left, possessing a one-two attack and the pugnacity of a killer.?
Wilde, known as the ?Mighty Atom,? because of his powerful hands, was to realize this right in the opening bell when Villa punished him with blinding combinations, drawing blood in the defending champion?s right eye, report of the fight by Filipino journalist Manuel Villa-Real, who was covering the bout for the TVT chain of newspapers, said.
The Welshman never recovered from this stupefied state although he tried to counter furiously in the next round which proved a big mistake. By the third round, Jimmy?s eye was closed as the Filipino continued pummelling him, sending him kissing the canvass in the fourth.
Villa dropped his opponent twice more in the fifth as cries from the sideline to stop the fight mounted, Villa, grandfather of four-time Bowling World Cup champ Paeng Nepomuceno, reported. Pancho looked at the referee to stop the fight, but the game but outclassed Jimmy insisted to go on even as he looked vanquished.
Pancho shifted his attack to the body in the sixth even as, in his corner, his foster father-manager Francisco Villa asked him what was going on. Villa retorted the proceeding was a senseless slaughter.
?Finish him off quickly then,? the elder Villa, Paquito in the local boxing circle then, ordered his boy.
So, when thebell rang for the seventh round, Pancho feigned a right lead prompting Wilde to raise his guard, inviting Pancho?s left to his stomach. The Filipino then smashed a aright to Wilde?s jaw, knocking him down.
The Welshman was finished. He was unconscious for five minutes. The fight was over as the Filipino?s camp celebrated. As Pancho gently helped his opponent back to his corner, a woman?s hand reached out to shake his glove. It was Mrs. Wilde, who thanked Pancho for his gesture. The crowd gave the new champion a thunderous ovation.
Click here to view a list of other articles written by Eddie Alinea.
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