Swift-eagle scores fast win over unknown foe at Shiprock

Ringside report & photos by Joel Priest
Special to NewMexicoBoxing

Picnic-perfect weather on the Navajo Nation helped sew together a hard-to-beat atmosphere:

Fresh melons, fry bread, peaches on the outside.

Fresh millin’, flurries, punches inside the ring inside a ring.

With a bumper-to-bumper barrier of high-profile vehicles creating a ‘coliseum’ around the squared circle, separating one type of business from another, Red Fist Promotions’ open-air “Rumble On the Rez II” commenced outside the Shiprock [N.M.] Chapter House under cloudless but contrail-streaked skies.

Saturday night was indeed—thanks, Elton John—all right for fightin’, but for the feature cars needed re-rightening for lightening the 130-pound bout between Thaddine Swift Eagle-Johnson and "Maria Sanchez." Unfortunately for the latter, the havoc in the halogens was as old-school as the illumination.

In the only pro bout on a card of exhibitions, Sanchez - an unverified opponent, announced as 3-0, 1 KO, from Mexico - came out on the offensive to greet Swift Eagle-Johnson. But the confident intro only preceded a shell-shocked outro; Swift Eagle-Johnson countered while moving forward herself, pounding Sanchez’s middle until one final right, set up by a left hook, crumpled the visitor back into her own corner.

Referee Al Barela’s count was loud for the crowd, and after Sanchez’s attempt to get to her feet failed at ‘Nine!’, an emphatic ‘Ten—YOU’RE OUT!’ closed the book on the bout just 28 seconds in.

Swift Eagle-Johnson improved to 8-0 with her seventh knockout with the extremely-obscure "WPBA" belt at stake.

“Well she came at me throwing,” said Swift Eagle-Johnson, “and I think, since I did not back up, changed her plan to overpower me. I hit her about 20 times; the commissioner [Solomon Alexander] said it sounded like firecrackers.”

And why not? The Fourth of July is just around the corner…

The real winner, though, was the community. The four-fight, one-demo card served as a fundraiser for the Shiprock Skate Park. And after the fighters’ and workers’ splits were distributed, $500 remained for the cause—a number Swift Eagle-Johnson says she's matched out of her own pocket for an even grand.

Not a bad night’s work, and all the more motivation to step up preparations for battling Mexico-born Fredee Gonzalez (6-7-1, 2 KO) for ten scheduled rounds July 16 in Atlanta, Ga. Also slated for that card is a IBU heavyweight title clash between Oliver McCall (55-11, 37 KO) and Bert Cooper (38-23, 31 KO), the same men who’ve fought names like Lewis, Holmes, Foreman, Bowe, Holyfield in their careers.

UNDERCARD: A couple hours before sunset, a three-round exhibition meeting between Shane Rascon and Efren Thompson got the action underway. Both hunting as of late for matches in the mixed-martial arts realm, the two went the distance despite Rascon—a former lineman for the semipro Four Corners Roughnecks football team—outweighing Thompson by a reported 260-190 margin.

The big heavy needed a mouthpiece adjustment in Round 2 and was warned for a low blow in the third, but was the overwhelming aggressor throughout against the cruiser and declared the victor.

Bout #2 pitted Jacquez versus Jacquez—brother Zach against sister Dacia—in an all-Bloomfield, N.M., three-round exhibition. With a trip to this month’s U.S. Junior Nationals in Mobile, Ala., on her horizon, 15-year-old Dacia was audibly encouraged by her 13-year-old sibling to keep punching, but was kept on the defensive—utilizing her feet to save what was announced as a ‘draw.’

Ken-Jok Bhotia was originally targeted to fight 2010 Native American National Amateur Champion Andre Harrison (now a 1-0 pro), but stepped inside the ropes to meet Cuban-born Yordan Hernandez-Perez instead in Bout #3, an exhibition three-rounder.

The lightweight [135 pounds] Bhotia was looking to earn some stripes against the light-welter [140], but took a standing-8 in each of the last two stanzas during what would have been a unanimous defeat. Estimating he’d been fighting for “ten, eleven years” overall, Hernandez-Perez also noted a desire to add fights to his 1-0 (1 KO—gained in August, 2010) professional record.

Prior to the main event was a martial-arts/self-defense demonstration inside the ring provided by instructor Pernall Perry and Thurston Frank of Tsaile, Ariz. The Bruce Lee quote on the back of Perry’s shirt summed it up best: “Knowing is not enough; we must apply.”

Displaying and describing what he referred to as the ‘art of destruction,’ Perry took the fans through a series of exercises at nearly-full speed—opening with an elbow-to-elbow, hand-to-hand ‘energy drill,’ which morphed into RAT [rapid assault tactics] combat, then progressed into simulated stick/pipe and knife fights. And concluded with a blurring blend of all, fittingly in dark-alley light.

And all the while unknowing traffic blurred east-west on U.S. Highway 64 barely 200 feet away.

Boxing, as stated before, can’t—and didn’t Saturday—get any more pleasantly old-school.

. . . .

Covering his first outdoor fight card, Joel Priest is a sportswriter/photographer for the bi-weekly Southern Ute Drum in Ignacio, Colo., and frequent contributor to many additional newspapers in southwestern Colorado.