Word: gavilan
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Boxing (Wed. 10 p.m., CBS). Kid Gavilan v. Johnny Bratton...
...shuffling, deadpan approach, versatile Ray Robinson varies his style to suit his opponent. Against France's Robert Villemain last year, he solved Villemain's famed defensive shell by shucking him like an oyster, ramming uppercuts between the Frenchman's gloves. With hustling leather-thrower Kid Gavilan, Robinson danced nimbly out of range, picking the punches off with his gloves, then took his man with a fancy exhibition of counterpunching...
...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 a blinding series of rights, lefts and underswung bolo...
...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...