By Bob Velin, USA TODAY
NEW YORK — The unquestioned star of the show Saturday night was the massive, $1.5-billion glittering home of the New York Yankees and the 20,272 fans that rocked it.
But the way the show ended was as bizarre as anything the new Yankee Stadium, or its predecessor, "The House That Ruth Built," had seen since hosting its first fight 87 years ago.
Miguel Cotto, fighting before a nationalistic and electrified crowd of supporters waving Puerto Rican flags, stopped WBA super welterweight champion Yuri Foreman, who had his own sizable Jewish cheering section, with a crushing body shot that dropped the champion at 42 seconds of the ninth round, and referee Arthur Mercante Jr. stopped it. With his new title, Cotto became a four-time world champion, in his third weight division.
But Cotto thought he had won the fight in the previous round when Foreman's trainer, Joe Grier, threw in the towel after his fighter, limping badly, had injured his knee. The fight appeared stopped in that eighth round, the ring filled with people and Cotto celebrated his return as a champion.
Or so he thought. Mercante, much to everyone's surprise, announced that the fight was not over and ordered all but the fighters out of the ring.
Cotto and Foreman finished the wild round, then came out for the ninth. Cotto (35-2, 28 KOs) smelled blood and attacked the limping Foreman full force. Foreman, who had slipped or whose knee had buckled several times earlier in the fight, tried unsuccessfully to avoid Cotto's onslaught. The Puerto Rican caught Foreman with the final left hook that dropped the champion, and Mercante stopped it.
"I knew the towel came from that corner, and the fight should have been stopped (in the eighth round)," said Cotto's new trainer, Emanuel Steward. "There were a lot of bad decisions going on in there."
Mercante said he didn't know where the towel came from, thinking it was thrown by someone not connected to Foreman's corner. But it was indeed Grier who tossed it in.
"There was no need to stop the fight. They were in the middle of a great fight," Mercante said. "That's what the fans came to see. I thought I did the right thing. You see a white towel thrown, and if you noticed I called time. They had an extra minute to rest. I went over to Yuri and said 'suck it up, kid.' "
Cotto, who had suffered recent brutal beatings at the hands of Antonio Margarito and Manny Pacquiao, who was at ringside, landed 115 of 329 punches, while Foreman, the rabbi-to-be and first Israeli world champion, landed 71 of 281. Foreman's first career loss dropped his record to 28-1, with 8 KOs.
"I proved this night, everybody who said Miguel Cotto was finished, everybody failed," Cotto said. "Miguel is back."
Cotto was well ahead on the scorecards when Foreman's knee twisted awkwardly in the seventh round. He was already wearing a knee brace from a bicycle injury he suffered as a teenager in Israel, and his family lacked health insurance to get it checked out at the time.
"I was making side-to-side movement and it gave out," said Foreman, who had suffered an earlier cut over his right eye. "It was very painful, a sharp pain," he said. "I couldn't really do a lot of movements."
Steward, a Hall of Fame trainer, said he thought Cotto, who earned $2 million for his night's work, "had fought a perfect fight."
Cotto, who wore Yankee pinstriped shorts, said he simply followed the instructions of Steward, who has trained such champions as Thomas Hearns and Sugar Ray Leonard, and currently Wladimir Klitschko.
"My jab is back, my movement is back, my left hook to the body is back," Cotto said.
Foreman said he thought the fight was over when the towel was tossed in, but kept fighting because he was the champion. "We're the world champion," he said. "We're not quitting. We need to fight."
Foreman, the Belarus-born fighter who was raised in Israel and emigrated to the U.S. just before his 19th birthday, is about a year and a half away from finishing his rabbinical studies. He had to wait at his hotel until the Jewish sabbath ended at sundown Saturday, then received a police escort to the stadium.
He said last week he would wait to see what happens Saturday night before he decides on his future.
Cotto said he was undecided whether to stay at 154 pounds or go back down to 147. "I'm always ready to fight the big fights," he said.
This was a big fight simply because it was the first time in 34 years the Yankees' home field hosted a fight. The new stadium with the old facade towered around the ring, which was set up behind second base. Many fans, especially those in the cheaper seats, arrived for the earliest of the undercard fights. The four levels of the stands were filled from the first-base said to the third-base side, as well as the 7,000-8,000 seats around the ring.
The energy level was palpable, even for the undercard fights. Cameras flashed continually as fans preserved their memories of the first fight at the New York Yankees since Muhammad Ali and Ken Norton fought for the heavyweight title in 1976. Ali won that controversial decision in his rubber match with Norton. Ironically, it was Mercante's late father, Arthur Mercante, who refereed that fight.
Fans waved Puerto Rican and Israeli flags throughout the stadium, though the former greatly outnumbered the latter. Three national anthems were played—Puerto Rico, Israel and the U.S.
The fans were clearly happy just to be witnessing history.
William Block of New York, a Yankees season-ticketholder, said, "It's a perfect place for a boxing match. I wanted to see what the place looked like at a boxing match, quite frankly. I know what it looks like during games and the World Series. This is pretty impressive."
Billy Childress, from central New Jersey, said the fight was attractive to him because it was the first fight there in 34 years. "It is a must-see event," he said. "It's pretty amazing that we're sitting in the middle of center field. You can almost imagine how the Yankee players feel out here. It's pretty magical right now."
His friend, Jason Jones, of Hoboken, N.J., said he wasn't pulling for either fighter, he just want to see a good fight. He called himself a Floyd Mayweather fan. "I want to see Mayweather-Pacquiao," he said. "But if it happens, I doubt it will be here."
On the televised (HBO) undercard between two undefeated fighters, former U.S. Olympian Vanes Martirosyan scored a unanimous 10-round decision over New York's own "Mean" Joe Greene.
In a physical fight that saw Greene (22-1, 14 KOs) knocked down in the 10th, Martirosyan (28-0, 17 KOs) won by scores of 96-93, 96-93 and 98-91.
In the first fight at the new stadium, Christian Martinez of New York scored a technical knockout over Jonathan Cuba at 1:18 of the fourth and final round of their super lightweight bout.
Source: usatoday.com
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