(NOV 1) It may not have
been as crushing as their second encounter, when López dropped her in
the third and fourth with hard shots to the face and liver before
stopping her in the seventh, or even as decisive as their first, where
all three judges had the Tlaxacalan ahead, but in the end it was the
same result: over ten hard-fought rounds, Delia “la Japonesa” López
ultimately had too much for arch rival Gloria ‘Dinamita’ Ríos of
Mexico City in their Mexican junior flyweight title match in the Plaza
de Toros ‘El Relicario’ in Pueblo on Friday, October 29,
judge Ortiz seeing her ahead by a wide margin (99-94), judge Cervantes
only narrowly (96-95) and judge Cuevas scoring the bout evenly (95-95).
Ríos had bitterly
contested the decision of their third fight, in the Sala de Armas de la
Magdalena in Mixihuca last April, which was given as a draw (thereby
allowing López to retain her title), and contested equally bitterly the
more recent decision of the Comisión de Boxeo del Distrito Federal
designating Adriana Chamoza and not herself as the official challenger (Chamoza
was injured last month in training and forced to withdraw), but in the
ring where it mattered, despite a fast start in which she seemed to be
having her way with the ring rusty champion, it was López, who remains
unbeaten now after eight fights, that was able to impose her will — as
she has now (one way or another) every time the two women have met.
For the champion, who
had talked earlier this year about emigrating to the States or else
moving up to flyweight or super flyweight (dismissing the level of
competition at junior flyweight in her country with the ironic
observation that a bee had had more luck with her jaw than any of her
opponents), the tireless lobbying of Ríos and her manager, Raúl López,
for yet another rematch had become a source of exasperation. After
thwarting the challenger now for the fourth time, she will be hoping the
matter is finally settled. “Pity!” she had said back in July, when the
bee sting forced a rescheduling of the original date set for the
encounter, “I was looking forward to showing Gloria Ríos once and for
all that I’m better than her.” It remains to be seen whether her
litigious rival — thoroughly bested here in the final rounds — has at
last got the message.
