What are the success rates in finding a real diamond in the rough that substantially shines for the gleaming tailspin of a speeding shooting fireball that fades through passing skies seen by the Atlantic in an almost effervescent picture about a comet that’s gone deceiving rhetorically your very eyes? That daring spin that was seen coast-to-coast came in the form of a long legged 5’7” inch python whose bite of venom would convulse the cleverest viper. His blistering right hand was as sneaky as a thief in the night, a mortifying engaging body puncher with both hands, along sizable advantages working his jab.
Born June 26, 1967, Tondo, Philippines, Luisito “The Earthquake” Espinosa, 47-13, 26 KO’s, also known as “Golden Boy/Lindol,” on an experience level had no equal. The San Francisco resident Bantamweight Filipino had a corrigible engagement that very few find in destinies. Luisito came onto his own after just three amateur fights, turning pro at age sixteen, supporting himself. He began getting prominence during 1987 just barely aged 20, going 4-0, including canceling three, including a September 5th win over Filipino favorite Dadoy Andujar.
Next on tap March 14, 1988, was a stop over to Tijuana, Mexico, where he was bedeviled by the more experienced pro, Juan Estrada. Luisito was biding his time to shine in the spotlight; sooner or later they’d take him seriously enough at his complete 118 staying fit and trim level in the gym. After two quick wins in San Francisco, May 20th against gutsy Ron Cisneros, and in July 23rd KO’ing tough as nails Mauro Diaz cold. Traveling to South Korea that December to end the year, Espinosa got a terrible decision levied against him in favor of the national Yung Chun Min, in Kwangju, but this was 1988, with flesh wounds and fresher carving imprints floating about Seoul and Roy Jones still lingering in all our minds. It was not going to be the kind setback to derail Luisito.
Had 1989 been the kind of PPV bustle that its cutout to be today, Espinosa would have been uncontested. Most of us clamored during those days with the much anticipation of reading bylines in the paper between telling outcomes in the Aqueduct section to be in the know, and then waited to read the bigger review for the upcoming boxing newsletter and magazine dateline.
What spewed like a hot volcanic ash about to erupt from the mountain was an indestructible and passionate one, who many people forget was the very first to have been compared to a spanking bantam in a demilitarized zone relic inside a Thomas Hearns extreme resemblance and fighting style. Espinosa had that same sort of “one punch” quality power, sustained a career 55 percentile average.
Cory Aquino was the President of the Philippines that time, and in 1989, that nation would begin to be reckoned with a real boxing Bantamweight to preside eminence.
That flame would carry 1989-90 with profound unencumbered magnetism and excellence. Luisito, sharing managerial duties with Mariecherie Espinosa, decided to take destiny through tiers with the family business toward a well-prepared level to allow him to succeed. That concentrated effort had given the sense about something set apart that mostly had been missing in many camps.
You would have thought the world was going to be in Luisito’s hip pocket with a championship. On October 16th 1989, Bangkok, stopping Khaokor Galaxy with the identical perfect “Anchor Punch” that Muhammad Ali called leveling Sonny Liston, only Galaxy had a few more seconds delaying in that fall, and just that abruptly the WBA Bantamweight Title changed hands in Espinosa’s shiny moment.
May 30, in his first defense of a fight that I seen complete, again in Bangkok, Thailand, he happily engaged at times looking playful, against rugged Hurley Snead with an outside strategy working in using his 69” reach advantage, that Mr. Snead gave up on his stool refusing to go out for the ninth round. Luisito at one time tripped going backward on his shoe and rolled standing upright (which was not a knockdown). Kronk’s Hurley did some tumbling “Real time” to the canvas; taken three of them to exact.
He wasn’t quite here in America yet, although he did defend his title abroad successfully twice for 1990.
On October 19, 1991, Manila, Philippines, he suffered an embarrassing defeat having gotten stopped by Venezuela’s Israel Contreras, at 2:16 in the fifth. It’s wise to note that it was Espinosa’s only mandated fight for the year to which Contreras would later lose his WBA strap to Eddie Cook in his first defense.
There were some refinements to be done in the Espinosa fighting artillery to be sought. He realized staying idled would be his mortal enemy; an abundant amount of activity began to go his way in training progressively within another fighting weight. Now his Trainer Danovis Pooler, along with his manager Emmanuel Rivera, would exercise control.
What most of us believed in our heart of hearts was that Espinosa wouldn’t abandon 118 to go thru 126, which he invariably did. A growing body had changed and done some good having the better solution to skipping the B-complex vitamin junior featherweight’s inoculation completely. What nobody figured on was when?
In ’92 he went undefeated at home, and then two more quick 1993 wins in Manila set himself up for a showdown on August 13th, Arena Coliseo, with Alejandro “La Cobrita” Gonzalez, Guadalajara, Mexico. Cobrita was the name his longtime trainer Javier Cepetillo affixed Gonzalez with during his amateur days in Guadalajara, meaning “Cobra” because of his sudden strikes being fast and hard like a cobra’s.
Espinosa got hit on the chin in the 2nd round by miscalculated crossfire… and down he went to his knees where he was counted out. The loss set him back to square one again, taking in the enormity of it, with a burning desire and inconformity to avenge that someday.
He fought just once in 1994 before a hometown crowd in May, kayoing Hong-Nam Yong.
1995 was the banner year where the earth began to shake in sums. Espinosa knocked out three of his obstacle courses to qualify as the WBC mandatory featherweight contender: Singnum Chuwatana, Tomoaki Iwasa, and the very ominously dangerous and multi-talented Raul “El Jibaro” Perez, all three KO’s were in Japan.
That led to meeting 5-Time Featherweight, and Former Super Featherweight Champion (he is still active as we speak), Mexican 126-pound icon, WBC Featherweight Champion, Manuel Medina.
Just to reiterate a bit to you that this was an affordable Pay-Per-View era, the economics that raised driven impacts made to increase those affluences were targeted for much reason to the Mexican and Filipino communities… not because they had exuberant amounts of money to throw around… but to get the ten bucks at the door with hoards of beers in a household that would more than adequately pay not only the event, but have a little extra for paying Monday’s babysitter. It’s about poor people supporting it. And if you don’t think it is, see if those PPV venues jack up the service to provide licenses to create a demand for people to gain accesses in stealing the feeds? Rich folk won’t help, and numbers don’t lie.
The industry knows beneath having an apoplectic heavyweight domineering champion, it would die a thousand deaths cranking up two European fighters at $54.95 a pop to serve on notice in a decapitated deathtrap pay site. That would be suicide.
In this satellite telecast, December 11, 1995, Korakuen Hall, Tokyo, Japan, Luisito elected to pick his spots, move away, and box Medina to gain a comfortable points margin and lift the WBC crown.
They made the March 1st 1996 rematch with La Cobrita Gonzalez back in Guadalajara, and as like they’d left off before, crisper punches from Espinosa came forth in higher volumes this time, improvising to striking effect on the body attack with even harder left hooks, and lead rights that bounced off of Gonzalez’s head.
Gonzalez would shoot the occasional short left to the body, and then back up to the head, but Luisito was quicker to disrupt fully the contact by initially circling into Alejandro’s left detonating his own explosive combination punching.
Espinosa caught La Cobrita with one of those swift two-fisted-gun salutes that dropped a visually exhausted Gonzalez down, befallen like he’d been hit with a tree trunk. A dazed Gonzalez couldn’t beat the count, and the earthquake that Espinosa unleashed that moment came at the interest rates of salvable honor, tears of wait, and finally gotten his payback!
His second defense came July 6th in Luneta Park, Intramuros, Metro, Manila, fighting against the hard punching Cesar Soto. Luisito retained his WBC Featherweight title. Went to Japan, November 2nd, for his third defense, and KO’d Nobutoshi Hiranaka to retain his WBC Title ending the year.
In 1997, made his fourth and fifth defenses, beginning with May 17 to a return of Medina in a less than stellar fight that ended in a technical decision for Espinosa ahead on points at the time, and then he made easy work December 6 eliminating Carlos Rios, Manila, Philippines.
By now Espinosa had an HBO contract coming into the 1998 year.
Made his sixth title defense August 15, 1998, El Paso, TX, versus Juan Carlos “El Ranchero” Ramirez, a quick-footed youngster who’s very durable inside countering power-punching categories off his movement. Juan Carlos did well in the middle rounds containing Espinosa’s assaults, sparingly, but the experience began to show in an over extended pace that Espinosa wanted to take him to those later rounds. The champion dictated an array of left hooks onto Ramirez…with a liquidation of widely angled bolo shots that ripped the youngsters sides by the 3rd. Late in the fourth stanza, Luisito sent Juan Carlos reeling backward with his signature telling Tommy gun right caught on the chin that somehow the kid from Juarez, Mexico maintained upright suspended by a thread, and not hit the canvas.
The results weren’t exactly what splurged on the equity for either fighter however, Ramirez, actually ahead on one judge scorecard, but overruled by the other two panels of judges, 2-1 for the champ. The featherweight champ became the recipient of an unfortunate eleventh round accidental clash of heads, leaving Luisito with a deep gash above his left eye unable to continue.
Most recall his October 28th riveting HBO televised bombardment defending his title for a seventh time against Kennedy McKinney, in Indio, CA. Espinosa dispatched of McKinney in less than two rounds so authoritatively, the nametag about being a “Miniature Tommy Hearns” grew a few pegs.
He was everything they said that he would be, and it set a visually disenchanted McKinney back retiring at his profitable trucking outfit. No one had a clue as to the amounts of fights that had taken their toll on Espinosa’s body thru the years but he, and you weren’t going to get any inkling as to that from anybody.
We may all speculate as to where he began to show those signs of deescalating reading his loss columns, which don’t tell the entire story by any stretch of the imagination, or be taken back at the two congenial weights where he became world champion in. But something you cannot rule out with any certainty is what weight division he would have faired more brightly by enlarge merely sifting through his title numbered defenses. No. I believe Luisito Espinosa was perhaps better destined to being a bigger bantamweight then most people gave him any credit for; who saw no opportunity as a Super Bantamweight for increasing his chances; and therefore leapt like a cheetah onto the 126 lb. proverbial world for economic purposes.
