It was supposed to be a struggle for Brian Viloria to wrest the WBC junior flyweight title from Eric Ortiz this past Saturday night. Instead, with one blistering right hand, he would starch Ortiz at the end of round one tocapture his first world title and electrify the fans inside Los Angeles’ Staples Center.
The result was as stunning as it was exhilarating.
About 15 minutes later he would make his way to his jubilant dressing quarters inside the bowels of the arena. Well wishers, like his 2000 Olympic teammate Jeff Lacy, would come by to offer their congratulations. A commission member asked him for a urine sample. And finally, his mother would make her way inside to join the festivities. Viloria’s trainer, Freddie Roach, would have plenty of time to prepare Manny Pacquiao for his bout in the adjacent room.
But what Viloria felt was far from euphoria.
“Just relief,” he would say. “Just days and days of waiting and training, preparing myself. It just comes down to this great feeling of winning a world title.”
It was an emotional night for Viloria, who not only was fighting for the first time after his nearly tragic bout with Ruben Contreras, but he was doing so in the same venue, with Contreras in attendance.
As he walked into the ring, he would embrace Contreras, who fell into a coma after their bout in late May.
“It’s just emotional,” he said. “Just seeing him there brought me back to that day. I see him as a true champion – not just of fighting, not just as an opponent, but a champion of life, and just seeing him there ringside….”
At this point his words trail off, his emotion overcoming him just a bit.
As Viloria made his entrance to the ring before the fight, he would get a loud and passionate ovation from the Filipino partisans that had come to see their icon, Pacquiao, take on Hector Velazquez later in the co-main event. Prior to the fight, Viloria had gone to great lengths to reconnect with the people he shares the same heritage with.
“That was incredible,” he would say of the reception he received.
But it paled in comparison to the jolting right hand he landed to stop Ortiz after a competitive first stanza, which was a spirited back-and-forth affair that had you believing that this would be a long, grueling night.
But with one punch, it was over.
Ortiz was served with ‘Hawaiian Punch’.
“I knew I could catch him when I threw a right hand. I just had to time it real quick and it just came so fast and I just caught him right on the button. I felt it and when I saw him go down, I knew that was it,” he recalled.
The result had the early arriving crowd in a buzz, the type of buzz that comes with a scintillating knockout. The kind that had the audience going ‘EWWWW!!!’ and ‘AAAHHH!!!’ as they watched it on the overhead big screen. It was such a devastating knockout that HBO deemed it worthy of showing on it’s regular broadcast.
His handlers would stream into the ring to celebrate his unlikely victory. His family, which had flown in from Hawaii, was in a state of unadulterated joy at ringside. He was a long ways from May 28th, 2005, when he had fought Contreras.
“It was emotional because I know the road I had to take and everything I had to go through to come to this point and that just became my prize at the end after going through all that,” Viloria said.
After ring announcer Bruce Buffer would make the official announcement, he would grab the mike and deliver a message to his new fans in his native tongue of Tagalog.
His message was simple: “I said ‘I love you’ to all my fans in the Philippines. I just said thanks to everyone.”
He would carry his new WBC belt into his dressing room, but in actuality, that particular belt isn’t his. The handing over of the belt after a title changes hands is symbolic, and Viloria will not get his green strap for at least a couple of weeks. WBC supervisor Chuck Williams would make Viloria aware of that and went over with him the specifics of his own belt that he would be receiving.
And as Williams would take Ortiz’s belt back to him, he had an escort in Viloria, who would make the short trek over to the next dressing room to hand him back his belt personally.
Ortiz seems stunned to see Viloria again as he gives him his belt. They exchange pleasantries and congratulate each other on their efforts. Through an interpreter, Ortiz lauds him not only for his strength and power, but his speed.
“No one’s ever done that before,” said Williams, who has presided over hundreds of championship fights.
Soon Viloria would be whisked away to his own impromptu post-fight press conference in the Chick Hearn Press Room.
It’s a new day and age for Viloria.
“I hoped for that scenario, I prayed for that scenario, I didn’t expect that scenario, but I knew what Brian was,” said an ecstatic Gary Gittelsohn, who has managed Viloria throughout his professional career. “I know that if he really focused and really dedicated himself to this profession, THAT’S the kid I signed.”
As the manager walked with his boxer to the press conference, he admitted that he had concerns about the mental state of his fighter coming into this bout. Not only did he have the psychological stains of the Contreras bout, in the past he had lacked consistency in the past, despite his unbeaten record.
“There’s some fighters who come out one way one time, and another way another time,” he explained. “And I never knew which was the real Brian, which was always my concern. And frankly we knew which Brian had to come out for this moment in time and for two weeks I had been saying to Brian, ‘It’s a second chance for a gold medal, don’t screw yourself for a second chance at a gold medal because not many people get the opportunity to get a second chance.'”
Viloria had moved down from flyweight to 108-pounds for this fight, not exactly the most lucrative division. But at the post-fight presser, Bob Arum – who had just signed Viloria months earlier – had visions of Michael Carbajal, who he developed into a million dollar junior flyweight in the 90’s.
“Yeah, absolutely!,” said an effusive Arum. “I think this kid could very well be a reincarnation of Carbajal.”
“With this performance I think you’re going to find out right now that Bob Arum has big plans for Brian, including some big promotions in Hawaii,” said a joyful Gittelsohn. “HBO is excited about the whole story, especially Brian’s performance tonight. It may be the first time since Carbajal that HBO may go down that far in weight to showcase a talent.”
Asked about the possibility of promoting a fight on the islands, Arum would sound a lot like former Buffalo Bills coach, Marv Levy, “Let me tell you something, in the dead of winter, where else would you rather be?”
Like everyone else, he was stunned by the swiftness of Viloria’s victory.
“Stunned beyond belief,” he admitted. “We didn’t even keep a fight in the tank because we figured it was going to be a 12-round fight.”
The next scheduled bout would be Pacquiao’s bout against Velazquez to kick off the HBO doubleheader. A good hour or so would go by before those two stepped into the ring.
At that point it still hadn’t sunk in that Viloria was a world champion.
“I’ll know when I step out of this door and I go back to my family, that’s when I’ll know I did something,” he said. “Right now, I’m just by myself.”
After the press conference, as he made his way to ringside, Viloria would be mobbed by fans for autographs and pictures prior to the featured bouts.
He had to know by then.
