Pride of Cuba

Pride of Cuba By trouncing Charley Fusari in March, Chicago's Johnny Bratton inherited Sugar Ray Robinson's world welterweight (147 lb.) title in the 47 states ruled by the National Boxing Association. But the New York State Athletic Commission figured it had a strong candidate for the title right in its own backyard: Cuba's (and Harlem's) Kid Gavilan, 25, winner of eight straight fights and one of the few boxers who ever stood up to Sugar Ray for a full 15 rounds. Last week in Manhattan's Madison Square Garden, Bratton and Gavilan fought it out for the right to put the 48-state title back together again.

Bratton, 23, a stand-up boxer with a stabbing left, a rough right and some of the fanciest footwork in the business, was up against a wily, hit & run boxer who attacks in flurries, shifts into a weaving defense designed to make his opponent look like a floundering club fighter. For the first two minutes of Round One Gavilan stuck right to the script, bouncing in to pepper Bratton from his low crouch, bouncing back away again to duck Bratton's right. Then he caught Bratton flush in the face with a jolting right cross, followed it up with a blinding series of rights, lefts and underswung bolo punches that brought the Garden crowd howling to its feet with cries of "Arriba! Arriba!" (Let's go! Let's go!)

Gavilan went after Bratton with a will, but never with a knockout punch. Shifty-footed Johnny Bratton crowded right back, but the sting in his right seemed to have been dulled. For the next six rounds it was a boxer's fight, a brilliant display of punch and counter without knockdowns or clinches. After that, it was all Gavilan. The judges' decision, while hordes of Gavilan's rabid rooters crashed through police barriers into the ring, with Cuban flags flying: unanimous for Gavilan.

Gavilan's margin was decisive. But Bratton's performance looked a lot more impressive after it turned out that he had fought the last eleven rounds under a double handicap: a broken right hand and a broken jaw. In his dressing room, Bratton, soaking his swollen right hand in a bucket of ice water, complained glumly: "You gotta hit 'em to make 'em respect you . . . and it hurt too much to hit him." Jubilant Kid Gavilan, first Cuban ever to win a world title,* happily verified Bratton's complaint: "He no never hurt me."

* In 1932 Kid Chocolate won the featherweight title in New York, never made his claim stick elsewhere.

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