Barnett grinds out Fight Night at the Tank win over Cruz in six rounds with body attack

September 12, 1:31 AMSF Boxing ExaminerColin Seymour

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That fight card Thursday (Sept. 11) at the Shark Tank may have looked bad on paper, but three of the bouts turned out to be worthwhile, including Ty Barnett’s sixth-round stoppage of Jose Leonardo Cruz in the main event.

Barnett (15-0-1, 11 knockouts) put on a boxing clinic, biding his time with a body attack as he wore down Cruz (13-4-2), a 32-year-old former Colombian Olympian who attacked only sporadically and didn’t win a round on my scorecard yet remained competitive. “I knew the guy would wear down from the body shots," said Barnett, a Washington, D.C. stable mate of the Peterson brothers you may have seen on ESPN. espn.com  "From the jump, that was the game plan.”  Barnett finally opened up in the fifth round and started landing clean shots in the sixth, flooring Cruz before a flurry in a corner prompted the bout’s stoppage. “Uppercuts and left hooks -- that’s what got him,” Barnett said.

They got him more deliberately in the junior welterweight (140 pound-limit) bout than the announced Fight Night at the Tank crowd of 2,793 would have liked, judging from the scattered boos directed at the mostly cautious journeyman.

A more entertaining boxing lesson, at the beginner level yet, featured heavily, heavily tattooed Jason Peterson, clearly no relation to the clean-cut Washington Petersons. Jason’s biker entourage from San Francisco cheered him lustily against the ostensibly lackluster Gabriel Gil, who is from Madera in the Central Valley. But Gil’s ponderous stand-up boxing orthodoxy easily trumped Peterson’s menacing but unorganized approach in the super-middleweight (168) bout. “Those tattoos don’t mean he’s tough,” a heckler shouted, as Gil (4-1) methodically jabbed to set up overhand rights and tagged the scary looking dude into submission in the fourth round. The bikers nevertheless seemed to welcome Peterson back into the fold.

Only the opening bout of the evening went the distance, as lanky featherweight (126) Alberto Soto (1-1) won by unanimous decision over 5-foot-3 newcomer Juan Topoz, who did land some overhand rights but scored far less overall in an active, entertaining bout that belied the inexperience of the combatants.

The other two fights were mismatches. The sub-main event showcased super-bantamweight (122) prospect Rico Ramo  (6-0, four knockouts) as he stopped rail-thin Alvaro Moro (6-9) in the third round. And Salinas welterweight Eric Garcia (2-0-1) had no problem with flabby last-minute recruit Marco Arauz (3-6-2)  stopping him in three.

Cruz was a stand-in for the main event, replacing the infamous To Be Announced only on Sept. 3. That stymied Barnett's preparation. “If I’d had time to study some tapes,” he said, “I might have gotten him sooner.”

OBAMA IS TO PERNELL WHITAKER AS McCAIN IS TO RICKY HATTON
With Pernell Whitaker making a celebrity appearance at Fight Night at the Tank, one of those boxing-politics analogies came to mind.

The frustration level for this Barack Obama partisan reflects what I’m afraid might happen if it were possible to match ‘80s-‘90s sensation Whitaker against one of boxing’s best current fighters, Ricky Hatton, at Hatton’s optimum weight, 140.

You would think Whitaker’s superior speed, skill and smarts would make for a lopsided decision or a stoppage on cuts. Instead, rabbit punches and low blows (as well as the insufficiently knowledgeable 300 million judges at ringside) are keeping  the lesser guy in the fight. (OK, I don’t know where Sarah Palin fits in this analogy.)

Now Obama needs to stop getting trapped in the corner and throw some combinations,  but I never got a chance to ask Whitaker how Obama can accomplish that while he’s being elbowed in the face.

Whitaker probably doesn’t know who Hatton is, seeing as how he didn’t know who current pound-for-pound theringmagazine.com kingpin Manny Pacquiao is. But he backed the little Filipino buzzsaw’s apparent plans to gain 15 pounds or so to fight Oscar De La Hoya. The Golden Boy's narrow decision win over Whitaker in 1997 is still a sore point with Sweet Pea, 45. Of De La Hoya’s ongoing career, Whitaker said, “Some dinosaurs just won’t die.”