Hapless Astorga no match for Duddy

BOXING:IT WAS back-to-the-future time for John Duddy on Saturday night at the Madison Square Garden Theatre. Reunited with his his original corner of trainer Harry Keitt and cut-man George Mitchell, the Derry middleweight produced another blast from the past when he annihilated his hapless opponent, Juan Astorga, in less than two minutes.

Early in his career the first-round knockout seemed to be Duddy’s stock-in-trade, and just two of his first nine professional fights lasted long enough to allow the round-card girls to make an appearance. But his last six fights had all gone the distance, and until Saturday night Duddy hadn’t registered a first-round stoppage in nearly four years (Shelby Pudwill, on St Patrick’s Eve of 2006.)

Astorga, a 31-year-old Mexican-born resident of Kansas City, brought a record of 14-3-1 to New York, but all of his wins had come on the Missouri-Kansas minor league circuit.

He had never fought east of the Mississippi River, and the two fights he had in Nevada ended pretty much the way this one did: he was knocked out by Ronald Hearns and Joey Gilbert, the only remotely recognisable names on his CV.

It quickly became apparent Astorga barely knew enough to hold his hands up. Duddy opened up with a ferocity that had seemed absent in his more recent outings, and Astorga, clearly anticipating the worst, looked as if he were scared witless even before he first tasted leather. Indeed, the first official knockdown came without Duddy even throwing a punch; Keitt said later it was a delayed reaction to a glancing blow to the head suffered several seconds earlier.

Slightly beyond the midpoint of the opening stanza, Duddy trapped Astorga in a corner, where he hurt hurt him with a left to the body.

After missing with a right, the Irishman landed a left uppercut that put Astorga on the floor again. It seems doubtful he would have risen again, but referee Wayne Kelly interrupted the count at four, took the opponent into protective custody and tried to dislodge his gumshield.

“I hope you got a good taste of that tonight, because there’s going to be more of that to come this year,” Duddy promised the crowd from the ring.

Duddy, who emerged from this one without so much as a scratch, is scheduled to fight March 13th at Cowboys Stadium in Dallas, where he will appear on the Manny Pacquiao-Joshua Clottey card before what promoters hope will be an audience of 40,000.

While his Texas foe has yet to be determined, Duddy advisor Craig Hamilton suggested the next opponent’s abilities would be roughly on a par with Astorga’s. (To be fair to Hamilton, that observation had come three days earlier, before the Astorga fight.)

Duddy’s bout immediately preceded the featured attractions of the nine-bout Top Rank card, a pair of featherweight title bouts that saw WBA champion Yuriorkas Gamboa of Cuba destroy Tanzanian Rogers Mtagwa in two rounds and Juan Manuel Lopez of the Dominican Republic methodically wear down Steven Luevano on the way to lifting his WBO crown via a seventh-round stoppage.

Their respective wins set up a likely Gamboa-Lopez bout to unify the 9st titles in New York later this year.