Word: bratton
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Chicago, Welterweight Champion Kid Gavilan successfully defended his 147-lb. title by trouncing Chicago's Johnny Bratton in a lopsided 15-rounder. Gavilan's next objective: the middleweight (160 Ibs.) championship, now held by Hawaii's Carl ("Bobo") Olson...
Boxing (Wed. 10 p.m., CBS). Kid Gavilan v. Johnny Bratton...
...Bratton, 23, a stand-up boxer with a stabbing left, a rough right and some of the fanciest footwork in the business, was up against a wily, hit & run boxer who attacks in flurries, shifts into a weaving defense designed to make his opponent look like a floundering club fighter. For the first two minutes of Round One Gavilan stuck right to the script, bouncing in to pepper Bratton from his low crouch, bouncing back away again to duck Bratton's right. Then he caught Bratton flush in the face with a jolting right cross, followed it up with...
Gavilan went after Bratton with a will, but never with a knockout punch. Shifty-footed Johnny Bratton crowded right back, but the sting in his right seemed to have been dulled. For the next six rounds it was a boxer's fight, a brilliant display of punch and counter without knockdowns or clinches. After that, it was all Gavilan. The judges' decision, while hordes of Gavilan's rabid rooters crashed through police barriers into the ring, with Cuban flags flying: unanimous for Gavilan...
Gavilan's margin was decisive. But Bratton's performance looked a lot more impressive after it turned out that he had fought the last eleven rounds under a double handicap: a broken right hand and a broken jaw. In his dressing room, Bratton, soaking his swollen right hand in a bucket of ice water, complained glumly: "You gotta hit 'em to make 'em respect you . . . and it hurt too much to hit him." Jubilant Kid Gavilan, first Cuban ever to win a world title,* happily verified Bratton's complaint: "He no never hurt...