James Kirkland TKOs Angulo, Candidiate for Fight of the Year

         In a clash of junior middleweight KO artists, James “Mandingo Warrior” Kirkland (30-1, 27 KOs) scored a sixth round TKO over Alfredo “Perro” Angulo (20-2-1, 17 KOs) on (Sunday Phil Time) at the Cancun Center in Cancun, Mexico. 

       Expectation had been of an electric battle, two power-punchers vying to turn his opponent’s lights out.They knew no other way. Each had only three decision victories on his record.

       It was not surprising that Kirkland was the first to fall. He can be as reckless as he is ruthless, his viciousness leaving him vulnerable. Kirkland’s pressure and punching pushed Angulo into a neutral corner. Kirkland, a southpaw, threw a right hook to the body, a right uppercut upstairs and then a left cross, but he brought his head straight back up, his chin in range and exposed. Angulo hit it with a right hand. Kirkland hit the floor. With one moment, the fight was in Alfredo Angulo’s hands. Within one minute, Angulo’s hands had made that no longer the case. Angulo knew his own power and thought he knew Kirkland’s weakness. Kirkland, however, was also aware of both.Kirkland rose from Angulo’s right hand, clear-eyed but clearly on the defensive. He tried to hold on to Angulo, but failing that he covered up, taking some shots, blocking and rolling with the others. Angulo expended too much energy loading up on power punches, tiring out with time to spare in the first round, with Kirkland’s legs returning and senses remaining. Kirkland had a second wind. Angulo had none. For all the symmetry of the action, it was better to be on the right side of the round, to end it better than you began. Kirkland had been knocked down from one punch. Angulo had crumpled from sustained punishment. Kirkland knew how to survive a grueling war, incorporating boxing into his brawling. Rather than overwhelm an opponent with indiscriminate volume, he set up his punches, putting together hard combinations and dodging Angulo’s shots. Angulo had tried to blow Kirkland away with one gust. Kirkland set out to break Angulo down with a sustained beating.

      Angulo landed more punches in the first round than he would for the next five rounds combined. Kirkland’s connect rate kept getting better – 27 percent in the first round, 34 percent in the second, 35 percent in the third, 39 percent in the fourth, 47 percent in the fifth and 56 percent in the sixth. Angulo was still throwing, but the battle was being beaten out of him. Kirkland pinned him against the ropes in the opening minute of the sixth round, peppering him with combinations, chipping away at a granite chin atop an unsteady foundation. The referee jumped in and Angulo wobbled backward. The symmetry of the first round had been followed by a one-sided beating for the next five.

Note: Kirkland, in his upset loss earlier in the year to Nobuhiro Ishida, had been overconfident and underprepared. He had tried to respond to the first knockdown rather than recover from it, leaving himself open to the punches that would floor him twice more. After the Ishida loss, Kirkland had returned to Ann Wolfe, the trainer who had worked with him until his prison term and whose training methods were designed to put her fighters through hell.