Cuban ex-patriates, featherweight Yuriorkis Gamboa and jr. middleweight Erislandy Lara had the crowd roaring in their abbreviated but spectacular performances.

      Yuriorkis Gamboa  seemingly was prepared to teach a quick, impressive lesson. His philosophy seemingly was of the “Why waste time” variety. Colombian Walter Estrada, with a 35-8, 24 KO’s record, may have been thinking, “What’s a kid going into his fourteenth pro bout going to show me?”

      Not too much. It was a short course – just one punch – a lightning fast lights out right to the jaw that that ended it at 35 seconds of the first round of the scheduled eight rounder.

Light-middleweight Erislandy Lara, 4-0, 3 KO’s,  now residing in Hamburg, Germany, is a former Pan American Games Gold Medalist and possesses an outstanding amateur record. He taught an overwhelmed, previously undefeated Keith Gross, Lusby, Maryland, 3-1, 1 KO, that when you pick yourself off the canvas after catching a lightning-fast overhand left from a very talented southpaw you better have some effective strategy in mind, whether offensive or defensive. If he did he never had a chance to show it as Lara nailed him with a bone-jarring left uppercut that deposited him in a heap and prompted referee Telis Assimenios to wave it off at 1:09 of the first round of a scheduled four-rounder.

In the ten-round lightweight main event, undefeated Breidis Prescott, Baranquilla, Colombia, 21-0, 18 KO’s set out to demonstrate against rugged Ecuadorian, Humberto Toledo, that his 54 second knockout of highly regarded Amir Kahn last September in Manchester, England was no fluke. Although Prescott was well out in front going into the final round, each round was a hard fought battle.  It was apparent that the rough-and-tumble Toledo was getting frustrated as he was warned on several occasions for rough-house tactics. In the eighth round Assimenios deducted a point from Toledo for hitting and holding. An interesting, hard-fought though one-sided battle came to a very unfortunate conclusion, when in the final round Prescott ran from the action to a neutral corner, grimacing in obvious pain and clutching his right shoulder, which – shades of Dracula – Toledo had sunk his fangs into. Referee Assimenios disqualified him on the spot. A sad way for an up to then gallant warrior like Toledo to go down in the record books.

      The moral is, “If you can’t beat ‘em, eat ‘em!”

Once regarded as the cream of the crop of the Cuban Team Freedom, Ramon Garbey, 208, Miami, who has had only one fight in the past five years, had no trouble taking a four round unanimous decision from West Virginia’s Mike Sheppard, 200 ½, 11-9-1,6 KO’s. He dropped Sheppard three times with a pulverizing right hand, once in the third and twice in the fourth round. All officials scored it 40-33 for the now 19-4, 13 KO’s Garbey. You have to wonder how such a once-talented fighter let the dream slip by. At 37 that’s all that it is, a lost dream and a payday.

The undercard featured Boca Raton, Florida’s big, bad growling one-man gang, Eric,”The Viking” Leander, 233 ½, who gave a course on how to mug a guy in front of a crowd of people and get away with it, which is exactly what he did to Mobile, Alabama’s 243 pound Bob O’Bannon, 3-2, 3 KO’s. As soon as the bell sounded for the only time during the fight, Leander stormed from his corner and completely overwhelmed O’Bannon, ambushing him and clobbering him with a no-style, but no let-up bombardment. A huge right hand clustered among a fusillade of blows dropped the dazed O’Bannon who arose only to run into a stunning left hook that sent him flat on his back and ended the slaughter at 59 seconds of the first round, improving the no frills Leander’s record to 5-0, 4 KO’s