GERRY PE?ALOSA got the short end of the stick in his make or break showdown with Daniel Ponce De Leon of Mexico.
No less than Manny Pacquiao was disappointed with the way the three judges scored the fight, a 12-round affair that was fought underneath the Marco Antonio Barrera-Juan Manuel Marquez superfeatherweight tussle in Las Vegas.
“Gerry won that fight,” said Pacquiao, who was able to watch the showdown on TV won by De Leon via a surprisingly lopsided decision at his apartment at the Palazzo.
“Gerry landed the punches that mattered most,” added Pacquiao, who caught the fight beginning the second round after planing in Saturday night (Sunday morning in the Philippines) via Philippine Airlines from Manila.
Two judges scored it 119-109 for De Leon and the third had it 120-108. The heavily pro-De Leon crowd at Mandalay Bay jeered the decision.
“I’m really disappointed,” said Pe?alosa, who dropped to 51-6-2. “I thought I won that fight. I want a rematch.”
De Leon (31-1 with 28 knockouts) never landed his trademark knockout punch against the game Pe?alosa.
Pe?alosa’s former handler, Cebu boxing patron Tony Aldeguer also lashed out at the way the judges scored the bout.
“They (judges) only saw Ponce De Leon’s punches,” said Aldeguer, whose boxing program was where Pe?alosa began to make some noise in the 1980s.
“De Leon was very aggressive and that won him the fight,” said top boxing analyst Moy Lainez, who nevertheless was unimpressed with the performance of De Leon.
“De Leon is easy to hit,” said Lainez, who believes that another Filipino ringster, Rey ‘Boom Boom’ Bautista, a prot?g? of Aldegeur, should be able to knock De Leon out.
“The problem with Gerry’s punches is that De Leon could take them. I am sure Bautista hits a lot harder than Pe?alosa.”
Aldeguer said he’s been raring to see Bautista get his hands on De Leon but said: “We just could not catch him.” (With report from Associated Press)
“It was a very tough fight,” De Leon said through a translator. “I feel I hurt him, but he has such great conditioning.”
The 26-year-old De Leon had plenty of confidence coming into the fight. On Friday, he said he was “very sure” he was going to win, although he didn’t say how.
But the 35-year-old Pe?alosa didn’t go quietly. In the second round, he stunned De Leon with a right cross.
Pe?alosa, a former WBC champion, kept the powerful De Leon at bay with counterpunches, flicking lefts and rights into De Leon’s face.
As the fight wore on, the crowd began chanting derisively.
Near the end of the 11th round, De Leon cut Pe?alosa on the top of his head with an accidental head butt. Pe?alosa bled heavily in the final round but never appeared to be in any trouble and was trading punches with De Leon until the final bell.
It was Pe?alosa’s first loss since Dec. 20, 2002, when he lost a split decision to Masamori Tokuyama in Japan. (With report from Associated Press)
