Even the great ones get stopped. Sometimes. A legendary chin can be cracked, just ask; there are too many great fighters to list – but examples of the seemingly unstoppable who were, in fact, stopped include George Foreman, Mike Tyson, Sonny Liston, Larry Holmes, and Muhammad Ali. And that’s just the heavyweights.
Sugar Ray Leonard suffered just one stoppage defeat during his glorious career, and ironically, it came at the hands of a fighter who was far from known as a puncher. Hector Camacho (RIP) is the only man who ever managed to humble Sugar to the extent that he never saw or heard the final bell. This was in 1997, when Leonard decided, once again, to come back.
Interestingly, Mexican great, former welterweight king Carlos Palomino – a man who was never once stopped during his long ring career – spoke with Leonard both before and after the ill-fated fight with Camacho.
Palomino, speaking with Slater’s Boxing on YouTube, commented on the fact that even the great ones can indeed get KO’d or stopped.
“In terms of great fighters getting stopped, [Roberto] Duran got stopped, Manny Pacquiao got stopped – he was knocked out on his face,” Palomino said. “Sugar Ray Leonard even……I mean, Ray Leonard, we used to work out at the same gym after retirement, just staying in shape, you know. He had been retired, I think, six years, maybe. He came over one day, and he asked me if he could ask me something. I said, ‘yeah.’ He told me he had just got an offer to fight Hector Camacho. I said, ‘What, how long have you been retired?’ And he said, ‘Well, they’ve offered me $ 4 million.’ I said, ‘Well if you don’t wanna take it, I’ll take it!’
“Anyway, I said to him that he [Camacho] really can’t hurt you, that he really can’t punch. And Ray agreed. And Ray Leonard had never been stopped. And then he takes that fight and Hector Camacho knocks him out. He’d been in with Tommy Hearns, a great puncher, and then he ends up getting knocked out by Hector Camacho. He came back to the gym, and he was like, he was just so down after that. I put my arm around him, because I knew I’d never been stopped and that was something I was really proud of. But, yeah, there’s a lot of good fighters……Ali got stopped, Mike Tyson, yeah, even George Foreman….”
Indeed, it’s a shock when certain fighters get taken out. But did anyone come close to stopping Palomino?
“I got dropped a couple of times, but they were flash knockdowns. I never took a count on the ground. But the one time I was really buzzed, I didn’t go down, but I was not clear, was when – and I didn’t go down, but I couldn’t really see my opponent – I fought Dave Boy Green. He hit me with a right hand, my legs wobbled, and I didn’t go down, but it was like a fog was in front of me. Then I recovered, trying not to get knocked out.”
Fascinating stuff; I hope you agree. Sometimes, the less-feared puncher can score the KO over the proven warrior.
What do YOU rank as the most unexpected, indeed shocking KO ever?
It was, to be sure, both sad and shocking seeing Sugar Ray Leonard get stopped in five rounds by Hector Camacho all those years ago.
