Manuel Medina set a Punchstat record for featherweights, but his 1466-punch output was not enough to keep Johnny Tapia from taking away his IBF featherweight title by a razor-thin majority decision. The official scores were 115-113 for Tapia (judges George Colon and Tony Paolillo) and 114-114 (Melvina Lathan). Fightnews.com agreed with Lathan, scoring it a draw. A slight majority of the ringside media favored Medina, but some had Tapia (now 52-2-2) winning and others scored a draw what was universally acknowledged to be a very difficult fight to score.

Although Marco Antonio Barrera is the true world champion at featherweight, the IBF belt that the 35-year old Tapia won tonight at Madison Square Garden means that he has now held world titles at three different weights, 115, 118 and 126.

What made the fight so tough to score was that although Medina was busier, he spent much of the fight in retreat, while Tapia was the aggressor and seemed to land the harder punches. "The decision was not correct," said Medina at the post-fight press conference. "I respect Tapia, and like the champion he is, I hope he will give me an immediate rematch."

Without a major promoter behind him, Medina, a pro's pro, is now at the mercy of the sanctioning bodies. Tapia started to say he would give Medina a rematch, but he was quickly interrupted by his wife/manager Teresa, who said, "we will go and see what makes the most sense." Translation: Medina won't get a rematch anytime soon, as the Tapias will chase a much more lucrative fight against Naseem Hamed.

Medina connected on 273 of the 1466 punches he threw. Tapia landed 80 fewer total punches and threw less than half as many as Medina did, but Tapia had the edge in power shots, 153-145. Surprisingly, Tapia appeared to have more power in his punches, even though Medina is a natural 126 pounder while Tapia won his first world title at 115.

The 3500 spectators on hand had to be the quietest crowd Tapia has fought in front of in some time. His charisma finally won over the crowd in the tenth round when he landed his best two punches of the fight to that point. Medina won the eleventh round on two of the scorecards and the twelfth on all three, but his rally fell just short of allowing him to retain his title.

Although rightfully overshadowed for much of the 90s by Hamed, the true featherweight champion at the time, Medina, 60-12, has had a wonderful career that has seen him win world titles three times. He is still just 31, although he turned pro in Mexico at the age of 14 and seemingly has been around forever. Tapia joins Tom Johnson and Luisito Espinosa as the boxers who have taken away Medina's world titles.