|
January 1958
Saturday 19 October 1957
Legion Stadium
Hollywood, California, USA
promoter Jackie Leonard
boxer lbs record boxer lbs record
Lulu Perez 129 39 11 2 L Lauro Salas 129 79 46 10 UD 10/10
Featherweight
referee: Lee Grossman 94-97 judge: Tommy Hart 92-97, Frankie Van 92-96
Eddie Gaspora 128½ 11 0 0 W Joaquin Veloz 125 1 2 0 TKO 4/6
Featherweight
Norman Letcher 173 2 0 0 W Tommy Johnson 176 4 1 1 PTS 4/4
Light Heavyweight
Gene Gresham 134½ 1 0 0 W Larry Wright 135½ 1 1 0 PTS 4/4
Lightweight
Wren Saxton 148 1 1 0 L Tommy Guytoni 142 debut PTS 4/4
Welterweight
JANUARY 1958 RING – A good crowd of 4200 came out to Legion Stadium on this Saturday night in October 1957 to see the featured match up of former World Lightweight Champion Lauro Salas lose a 10 round unanimous decision to Lulu Perez who as a 10-7 favorite to the “betcha boys”. Both fighters suffered cuts over their left eyes, Salas in the 6th round and then Perez in the 8th as it was hot and heavy fighting throughout the fight. Perez picked up the good margin scoring win despite a one point penalty for a low blow.
Out heavy division action in this card was a light heavyweight matchup between Norman Letcher 2-0-0 and Tommy Johnson 4-1-1. Letcher came away with the 4-round decision. Letcher is noted as a heavyweight in BoxRec and I guess you could make the argument to rate him as such going up and down in weight himself hang most of the time from the 175 – 179 range but, a good number of his biggest name opponents, in the later part of his career were light heavies Mauro Mina, Sixto Rogriguez and Bob Foster. But he also earlier fought the likes of heavyweights Sonny Moore, Dave Furch and Zora Folley. So later when we see Letcher again in May and June of 1958 to fight Moore, I might work on a HW version and see what differences there might be. Surfing the internet, I found an obituary on Norman Cornelius Letcher. A very interesting man. I’ve included in his file the web link to that article for your reading. Doesn’t tell a lot about his boxing career, but the comments confirm this is the one and same Norman Letcher from the boxing ring world. Included a photo of him, in his later years of course. Finding little gems like this on the internet is what makes this project extra fun I’m finding. Tommy Johnson, I could not find anything about him. I did rate him as a LH and MW. Look at his career he started out as light heavy, took a break in his career after losing by KO to Curley Lee in November 1957 which will be his next fight after taking on Norman here. Will be interesting to see if I find out anything more about him in I’m guessing maybe the Feb 1958 ring account on the Lee fight. Anyway in BoxRec Johnson reappears in June 1961 and the rest of his career he’s fighting pretty much as a middleweight. So I”ve broken him down into ratings for both divisions.
TITLE BOUT 2013 – Our fight replay has Norman Cornelius dominating pretty much the 4 rounder for a Unanimous Decision 40-35, 40-35 and 40-36 scores. Interesting that all referee and two judges all gave all 4 rounds to Letcher, but the referee scored the 2nd round 10-9 while the judges went with the more expected 10-8 scores with Letcher putting Johnson down for an 8 count in the 2nd with a perfect hook.
|