Drunk – Punch Love: Cintron vs Estrada

21.04.06 – By Jarrett Blakeley: When I arrived at the Palm Beach County Convention Center there was a buzz in the air. I knew this was going to be a great night of fights, but there was even more excitement than I anticipated. Kermit Cintron and David Estrada were at a crossroads and everyone knew that they would keep coming and putting pressure on each other until one of them broke. I predicted this would be the 2006 Fight of the Year, and it very well may have been.

I arrived a full hour before the first fight, so I began drinking. As all of you know, when I drink, I drink hard. I drink like these guys fight, I just keep coming. The bartenders couldn’t even handle it, they were on the ropes. No one drinks and writes, and holds in a piss like Jarrett Blakeley. I really thought Teddy Atlas was going to come over and interview me, you know, to ask me how I do it. ‘You’ve drank seven beers in the last hour and you haven’t even seen the inside of the bathroom. You must have had a great camp. How do you feel?’

‘Well Teddy, take a look in that garbage can over there and all your questions will be answered.’

In the first fight of the night, Max ‘Holy Hands’ Cuevas (8-3-1, 4 KO’s) fought Fontaine ‘The Flame’ Cabell (22-6-1, 17 KO’s) in what was a pretty good scrap. I had spoken to ‘Holy Hands’ at the weigh-in the day before and I really liked him. He told me he won the New York Golden Gloves in 1993, and had been away from boxing for awhile before he went pro. ‘I’m 30, but I’m a young 30, man. I got a lot of great fights left in me.’ He thought he got a raw deal in his previous fight which was in Rochester, NY against Francisco ‘El Gato’ Figueroa (13-2, 10 KO’s). Wait, this guy calls himself the fucking cat? Worst nickname ever. Max said he knocked that cat down in the last round but the referee ruled it a slip and gave Figueroa extra time to recover, which makes sense with the nine lives and all. ‘That hurt me and it was just a bad decision, I don’t know how the judges saw it that way.’

I was really pulling for Max because he seemed like such a nice, cool guy. ‘The Flame’ won the first couple of rounds and his reach advantage was giving ‘Holy Hands’ a holy fit. Max told me, ‘He’s a pretty tall fighter, and he was using his experience to stay away from me, and sometimes it takes me a little while to get into my rhythm and get to what I want to incorporate into a fight.’ The fight turned around when Max started landing hard lefts to the body. Max throws a perfect left hook and those hooks were really hurting Cabell. Max started to land some nice combinations to the head in the later rounds rocking ‘The Flame’ several times. ‘Holy Hands’ took the decision out of the judge’s hands in the eighth round, extinguishing ‘The Flame’ with a brutal combination, and forcing the referee to stop the fight.

I asked Max what was next for him and he told me, ‘For right now, we’ll keep things going, rest a little, that will make us stronger. We’ll be looking forward to a fight soon in the future. I’ll fight again in maybe a month and a half. Last night was a great victory for me against a real experienced fighter and I’m glad I got to show everyone what I could do on ESPN.’ Max added, ‘I just want to mention that my trainer, Peter Brodsky, that he’s a very good trainer, and I just feel that his style and my style, we connect, and it’s really been working out for me. We’re two but one together.’ Max is managed by Johnny Sanger and sponsored by Royal Concrete Concepts, a company he formerly worked for.

The next fight ended swiftly, a brutal 2nd round TKO of Orlando Milian (14-6, 11 KO’s) by the Bahamian middleweight, Jerome Ellis (9-4-1, 8 KO’s). This fight was never particularly competitive because Ellis beat Milian like a red-headed stepchild, loading up on every punch as if he thought he actually might be able to knock his head clean off his shoulders. Milian must have a pretty strong neck. During this fight there was actually a street-fight near one of the bars but I didn’t really catch what happened because it’s kind of hard to run with two beers in each hand. A nose was bloodied and a beer was spilled which I proceeded to lick off the floor to the horror and dismay of pretty much everyone in the arena. ‘It’s OK everyone, I’m an alcoholic.’

Just as I was finishing, the crowd went nuts as Kermit ‘The Killer’ Cintron and David Estrada made their way into the ring. When they got there Estrada stared down Cintron, who simply ignored him, keeping his back turned. It was on. These guys simply did not like each other, and they were about to get a chance to express those feelings in the rawest way imaginable. The crowd was clearly pro-Estrada, because he lives in South Florida, training out of the South Florida Boxing Gym in Pembroke Pines, which is a beautiful boxing facility that I would recommend to anyone whether they be a novice or a pro.

Estrada came out very strong, forcing his way inside of Cintron’s powerful jab and taking the fight to him. Estrada had repeatedly told everyone that he thought if he kept the pressure on Kermit, he would fold. Kermit didn’t fold although he had some shaky moments in the first few rounds. In the third, Estrada opened up a cut over Cintron’s eye, but Cintron kept his cool. Cintron was like a machine in the ring. Here he was, in the middle of this war, and the expression on his face never changed. He was all business.

I give Estrada enormous credit for figuring out ways to land big punches against his much more athletic opponent. Estrada has a tremendous amount of ring savvy, and as much heart as you will see in a prizefighter. And he’s a cool, funny guy. I expect great things from him going forward.

As the fight went on, ‘The Killer’ started to connect with more and more big punches. Estrada had some nice moments of his own, but you could see the tide begin to turn. By the eighth round, Estrada wasn’t really hurting Kermit anymore, and the shark saw blood in the water. Things were getting bad for Estrada in the ninth, although he was still a very game opponent. At the end of the ninth round, the normally quiet Cintron grabbed his cup and shouted something at Estrada, probably in retaliation for some of the talking Estrada was doing throughout the fight. It didn’t look as if this fight would go the distance.

Kermit went in for the kill in the tenth round, landing multiple combinations before knocking Estrada down for the first time all night. Estrada easily beat the count, but he didn’t look very good, and Kermit really punished him, forcing the referee to stop the fight, because Estrada refused to go down. Estrada disagreed with the stoppage, telling me ‘I thought it was messed up how the ref stopped the fight. I was good. I could have kept fighting. I watched the tape today and I thought I won six rounds and Kermit had won three. In the last round, I felt good. He rocked me, but I had just clinched him and then the ref stopped it. If I was out of it, I wouldn’t have clinched. That showed I was fine. If the ref had let the fight go on, I would have won. I’m not taking anything away from Kermit though, he’s a good fighter.’

I asked David what his other thoughts were on the fight and he told me, ‘I had him hurt at least three times, he was smart though. One time he spit his mouthpiece, and the other times he just kept clinching and the ref didn’t warn him about it, but that’s just the way it goes. I want a rematch. I know I’ll win the rematch. I feel good. First of all they had to fight with me to get me to go to the hospital. I only went because my mom was worried about me and she really wanted me to go, so I went. Usually, they put you on a stretcher, but I wouldn’t get on no stretcher. I said if I’m going, I’m walking to the ambulance because I was fine. They gave me an MRI and they told me everything was cool. Everything came out cool. Next week I’ll get back running, probably in about 2 ½ months I’ll be back in the ring. I want a rematch with Kermit. I know I’ll win the rematch. I feel good, I got a couple bruises but besides that I feel like nothing ever happened.’

After the fight I followed Kermit back to his locker room where he celebrated with his team and his family. I chatted with his wife a little bit, and she was really cool and very knowledgeable about the fight game. In a light moment, his little daughter approached him and said, ‘Daddy, why are you cut? Why are bleeding?’ ‘I tried to not get cut,’ Kermit replied, showing his sense of humor for the first time all week. Kermit’s cool as shit, I bet he’s really fun to hang out with when he’s not intensely focused on destroying the best fighters in boxing’s most exciting division.

After the main event, my friend and I started talking to a couple of beautiful Palm Beach women. They were hot, but not quite hot enough for us to give them our real names. I told them I was Rudolf Schmidt, and my buddy was Ron Mexico. I asked them if they wanted to go out drinking, but my girl quickly countered with, ‘You’ve got a beautiful face, where are you staying?’ I told her we had a suite at the Marriott and the four of us were on our way. My girl’s body was amazing, and she was really cute, too. I almost regretted giving her a fake name, but it was far too late to come clean.

These things happen to me on a daily basis, so when we got back to our room the first thing these wonderful twenty two year-old women saw were bottles of Patron and Dom P. in a sink filled with ice. We took shots and drank Champagne out of plastic cups. After awhile, my girl and I left the other couple in the bathroom and made our way towards the bed. I’m not going to say what happened because I’m a gentleman, but there was plenty of pole-smoking involved. Apparently, Ron had unprotected sex with his girl in our shower. Ron’s a smart guy, he actually thinks you can’t get a girl pregnant if you have sex under running water. Good thing we used our aliases.

I spoke to Kermit’s promoter, Bobby Bostick the next day, and asked him what was next for the promising welterweight, ‘We’re gonna talk to Oscar De La Hoya, Fernando Vargas, Floyd Mayweather, Arturo Gatti, Ricky Hatton and Antonio Margarito. Kermit’s grown up since he fought Margarito last year. His old manager Marshall Kauffman did a great job and Manny took it from there. I never realized what a great boxer Kermit is. We knew he could hit, but we didn’t realize just how skilled he is. Manny has really brought him to another level. I love him, man. I’ve invested time, and blood and sweat in Kermit and we have a great thing going here. His wife Maria is a sweet, beautiful person, and they have a wonderful daughter, Savannah. They’re just a beautiful family. His manager Josh Dubin is great. Emanuel Steward did a great job and we’re really blown away. We want the rest of those titles and all that money that comes with it.’

Next, I asked him what he thought of Estrada, ‘He’s a pit bull, he’s such a warrior. I’d let him fight for me anytime, he’s got a chin like a rock. I didn’t think we had this fight won for awhile. Estrada is a fighter for sure, one thousand percent. I think Estrada will be a champion someday. I really do. He comes to fight, he’s not here to play around. He helped elevate Kermit to another level, and in two fights I think he’ll be top ten again. ‘Sugar’ Shane Mosley couldn’t even knock out Estrada, but Kermit did. That shows what kind of fighter Kermit is. This fight could have gone either way, but the superior boxer won. Cintron looks like a different fighter after eight weeks training with Emanuel Steward in Klitschko’s camp in Spain.’

‘There’s just a few things I want to tell the world,’ Bobby continued, ‘The cut was caused by a head butt, we’ve watched the tape at least twenty times. We’re not suspended, Kermit didn’t even need any stitches. We got him checked out. He said he felt fine, but we take care of our fighters at Bobby Bostick Promotions. Their health and safety is our main concern. We’ll probably fight a tune-up in 3 months and then we’ll go for a big fight against one of the top five or six guys. My top pick would be Mosley, he’s one of the biggest pay-per-view draws in any weight class. Also, just this morning, I came to an agreement with Corey Spinks, where we figured it would be best if we both parted ways. Don King could have tied him up in court for years about this, so we came to a mutual agreement to split up. His manager, Kevin Cunningham and his lawyer, Freeman Bosley are great guys, they were both very professional, and hopefully we can do business in the future. Corey and his team are a class act. Finally, I want to let all the top fighters know I’ll promote any top HBO, Showtime, or ESPN fighter, and take them to the next level just like I’m doing it with Kermit. Kermit put on a hell of a show last night and Bobby Bostick Promotions is going to keep putting on great shows. I’m very proud of Kermit, he’s a true champion.’

Well, there you have it folks. It was a pleasure covering this event for all of my fans, and as long as these guys keep hitting each other and I keep hitting skins, I’ll keep writing the best boxing articles in the world.

Jarrett Blakeley can be reached at jarrettblakeley@yahoo.com