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Close Call for the Macho
Man
Hector Camacho got Edwin Rosario riled up, but the
lightweight champ made off with a split-decision
win
by Pat
Putnam
Issue date: June 23,
1986
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Rosario (right) couldn't finish Camacho, who came away with the split decision.
(Tony Tomsic)
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His seven-year-old son, Hector Jr., told him after the
fight, "Daddy, you are lucky you're alive." The
next morning his girlfriend, Keesha Colon, said his face
looked liike a Cabbage Patch doll's. Because his mouth was
relatively undamaged, Hector
Camacho managed a small smile, and he said, only half kiddingly,
"Hey, if this is macho, I don't want no part of
it."
That was last Saturday. The night before, at Madison Square
Garden, Camacho had survived the hammering hands of Puerto
Rico's Edwin Rosario and saved his WBC lightweight
championship with a split decision. His $500,000 payday
came hard: Rosario, who had
held the same title from 1983 to '84, had almost knocked
him out with an overhand right followed by a left hook in
the fifth round, and again, in the 11th, with a left hook
that nearly lifted the champ out of his glittery red,
white and blue boots. "He
hit me.
Wham!
Wham!" said Camacho. "I say, Damn, it doesn't hurt,
but it sure feels funny.
Wham! Damn! I fought a war and
I can tell you right now, Hector Camacho don't like no damn
wars."
The scars of battle were visible on Camacho's face. His
swollen nose was scuffed red at the bridge and jutted out
between two black eyes. A long pinkish slice on his left
eyelid was held together by three dark stitches.
"I see my nose in the mirror and
I think, My God, I need a Tylenol," Camacho said.
"Then I think, Why I need a Tylenol?
I don't have a headache. All I got is a big nose. That damn
Rosario fight like he mad at me."
Not having fought since December, the unbeaten champion
(now 30-0) never truly got untracked. He split the first
four rounds with Rosario, but early in the fifth, Rosario,
who had scored 19 knockouts in a 23-1 career, caught
Camacho pulling away from a
right hand and rocked him with a left hook. "I wanted
him to throw that hand so I could counter," Camacho
said. "But my timing was off and he got cute. I'd
block one and he'd come again. Pow! I thought, Oh, Lord.
Pow! Pow! How do I stop this? So
I say,
Take him to the ropes and let him calm
down."
Barely surviving the fifth, Camacho showed that there's
more to this macho business than just talk. He came back to
win the next five rounds with quick feet and a jab. Then,
just as the champion was winning the 11th round easily,
another Rosario hook
caught him. Again Camacho weathered it. ("He didn't have
no killer instinct," said Camacho.) But the champion
didn't have much of anything left himself for the 12th and
final round, which Rosario took
handily.
So it went to the judges. Two of them, Stuart Kirshenbaum
and Tony Castellano, had the champion winning 115-113. Luis
Rivera, who gave Rosario the 5th and 11th rounds by two
points, had the challenger winning
114-113.
"If I fight him again," growled Camacho the next
morning, "I want a million dollars. If I'm gonna come
out looking like a Cabbage Patch doll, I want to get paid
for
it."
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