Johnny Tapia closes out his “Crazy Life”, at least the Boxing portion of it
Unlike Bernard Hopkins, it seems like Johnny Tapia is actually going to follow through on his promise of retirement. After an impressive career lasting nearly twenty years in which he amassed 56 wins with only five defeats.
Tapia’s “final fury” came friday night, when he scored a victory by majority decision over 29 year old Evaristo Primero. After decades of involvement in the sport of boxing which started with 150 wins on an amatuer level, Johnny Tapia may not have been as fast or hit quite as hard as he had in his prime, but he gave the sellout crowd of three thousand fans at a New Mexico casino what they came to see - An entertaining fight that ended in a victory for the states most popular fighter.
Coming up in a difficult environment that saw his mother kidnapped and murdered when he was eight years old, through trouble with drugs, trouble with the law and rumored affiliation with gangs Johnny Tapia was able to straighten himself out and become one hell of a professional fighter, holding five different championships in three different weight classes.
Tapia amazingly held an undefeated record for the first decade of his professional career, his first loss coming in 1999 to Paul Ayala, in what many called the best fight of that year.
Crazy life or not Johnny Tapia will be missed by the world of professional boxing, but I get the feeling we’ll by seeing Johnny right outside the ring in the very near future. His son Johnny Tapia II is slated to make his amatuer boxing debut sometime in March.
Johnny Tapia, boxing, Mi Vida Loca
March 6th, 2007 at 7:01 pm
[...] Original post by Jeff Wilson [...]