K.O.W. - Chava

Jose Luis Castillo is fighting this weekend in Mexico against a 33-year-old Mexican tomato-can by the name of Adan Casillas. The fight is almost entirely unpublicized here in the States - it seems that El Temible's long stay in the boxing limelight is over, and now he is destined to go the way of Mexico's greatest fighting legend, JCC. Like the man who gave him his start as a sparring partner, it is really hard to imagine Castillo ever hanging up the gloves, and very easy to imagine him fighting into his fifties.

This thought of great Mexicans fighting way past their time for some reason brings to my mind one of the nation's most treasured boxing icons, a man whose career sadly ended long before its time. Salvador Sanchez was a household name in the fight world in the late 70's and early 80's, and had he lived longer than that he undoubtedly would be as famous today as Chavez himself. A hard-punching, light-stepping assassin in the ring, Sanchez, known as "Chava", won the WBC featherweight title in 1980 by shocking Danny "Little Red" Lopez in a nationally televised brawl that made the explosive Mexican a TV fighting star. He defended that title 10 times over the next two years in what were generally thrilling, action-packed fights, including a rematch with Lopez, a slugfest with Wilfredo Gomez and the fight below, our No Mas Knockout of the Week, the last fight of Sanchez's career. It was contested at Madison Square Garden and featured an unknown boxer from Ghana appearing for the first time in the U.S. - the man we would come to know as "The Professor", Azumah Nelson. For 15 rounds, these two principals battered each other in a throwdown that in retrospect makes Castillo/Corrales look like heavy petting. Sanchez won on a TKO in the last round, and was well on his way to mega-stardom and a reputed superfight with Alexis Arguello. But less than a month later he crashed a brand-new Porsche outside Mexico City and was killed instantly, a cruel tragedy that made him boxing's James Dean, a perpetual "what might have been?" for all who witnessed the fury and magnificence with which he plied his trade.