Courtesy Jim Jenkins, Sacramento Bee
Even without marquee participants, Sacramento’s once-robust boxing persona still has a pulse. Little formal advertising was needed for fight-starved fans, after a pandemic, to overflow a 1,000-plus-seat hotel venue Friday night.
Local welterweight David Melgoza (6-1), however, couldn’t completely sate their appetite, losing the main event by majority decision to Elias Diaz (11-0) of San Diego. The judges’ scores in the eight-round, no-knockdown match between unbeatens were 76-76, 78-74 and a puzzling 80-72 favoring Diaz, stronger in the home stretch.
Sacramento area fighters nearly swept the preliminaries, though. It was David Minter (3-1) by KO-2 over Matthew Reed (1-2) of Bakersfield, welterweights; William Villa (5-0) by UD-4 over Jorge Soto Aguilar (1-1) of Salinas, featherweights; and Kevin Montano (1-0) by KO-2 over Tyler Marshall (1-8) of San Diego, super-featherweights.
Joeshon James (4-0) won by UD-4 over Christian Duran (1-1) of Hayward, middleweights. But Cmaje Ramseur (0-1) lost to Mark Salgado (1-0) of Corona by KO-4, lightweights.
Good to see boxing back in Sacto. I remember it was a hotbed of boxing in the 70’s and 80’s- Bobby Chacon, Pete Ranzany, Tony “The Tiger” Lopez, Lorreto Garza, and a host of entertaining local fighters all hailed from Sacramento. It was one of those cities, like Philly, where being a boxer from Sac came with a badge of honor and one had to prove worthy of that honor everytime they stepped in the ring.
I remember watching Garza and Lopez. Lopez was a regular on the networks back in the day. Saw him win the title against Rocky Lockridge. Very good fight which was held in Sacramento. Tony Lopez-Freddie Pendleton was a good fight as well. Lopez was a bit over the hill for that one and was dropped several times, but managed to drop Pendleton as well. He was usually in action fights.