The second fight of the second round found Alfredo Escalera,
Jr. fighting AK Laleye. But as usual, some other goings-on took place before
that.
You might remember that in his fight with Tim Flamos, Ryan
Coyne suffered a cut over his right eye. It was stitched up, but it was to be
later determined whether or not he could continue in the tournament. After
being re-examined by the doctor, the injury had gotten worse, and it was
recommended to him that he not fight.
Escalera had a little talk with Coyne the night before. “I
told him, ‘Look, you came over here undefeated, if you decide to go home,
you’re leaving undefeated. They’re going to be gunning for your cut. It’s in
your best interest to not have a fight stopped because of a cut that was caused
by something else, and not by a cut during that fight. If that opens up and
they stop the fight, you’re going to feel real crappy.’”
With Coyne out of the tournament, it was necessary to bring
back one of the other fighters who had originally lost their first fight. Only
three men were medically cleared to fight, Mike Alexander, Joell Godfrey, and
Erick Vega. It quickly became between Alexander and Godfrey. Deon Elam, Laleye,
and Escalera thought that Mike earned a shot back, while Troy Ross and Rico
Hoye opt for Joell.
Hino Ehikhamenor wouldn’t say. Instead, he basically left it
up to Hoye to pick his own opponent. All the others then switch their pick to
Godfrey. All that is, except Alfredo. He took exception to Rico wanting to
fight the weakest fighter who, according to all, would be Joell. After Escalera
and Hoye exchange some heated words, accompanied by some pushing and shoving,
the decision to bring back Godfrey is finalized.
At last it was time for Escalera and Laleye to make their
way to the ring to see who would move on to the semi-finals. The first round
was full of action, mainly from Alfredo. He was connecting with his jabs more
often than AK, and looked well prepared. The second round could have gone
either way, but Laleye seemed to come back a little bit stronger than Escalera
in this one.
“I felt the first two rounds I did alright,” Alfredo later
told me. “I kind of lost my head going into the third – maybe a lot of anxiety.
I didn’t feel I had any reason to question my conditioning going into the
fight. I knew I had done everything possible for a fighter to do, I did all my
roadwork, I trained hard, and I ate right.”
But something happened, and in the last two rounds things
changed dramatically. Escalera, who had looked so fit in the beginning of the
fight, began to look tired, very tired. A trainer will sometimes tell his
fighter that his opponent is tired to help pump him up. But when trainer Tommy
Brooks told AK to look across the ring, that Alfredo was done, it was the
truth.
AK himself looked a bit tired, but at the same time he
became the aggressor. His body shots and blows to the head were doing their
job, and there was no question who was landing the most punches. Escalera
managed to withstand the fourth round, but couldn’t last the fifth. The
knockout for Laleye came at 1:51 of that round.
So what contributed to bringing Alfredo down? The loss of
Coyne to the tournament, along with the fact that Felix Cora, Jr. lost his
fight the previous week, put Escalera on an island, as it were. Even though
there were no more teams per se, other than Alfredo, all those left on the show
had been members of the Gold Team, and they were sticking together. He had an
incident with Hoye the day before over Rico’s decision to bring back Godfrey.
He fought on emotion rather than game plan.
“That fight outside the ring the night before prevented me
from getting a good sleep,” he told me. “There was nobody in my room, there was
nobody to calm me down. On any other occasion there would be a trainer to talk
to, or you could pick up the phone and cal a friend; I could call my brother. I
couldn’t do that in this situation.
“In the condition I was in I shouldn’t have gotten tired in
five rounds, and I got tired in two rounds. It just wasn’t my night. It happens
to fighters. That should have been an easy night for me, but it didn’t happen
that way. He came with a clear head, on top of his game, and he fought the
fight he needed to fight to win. I can’t take that from him.”
On the whole he thought his experience was great. “It
probably would have been better if we had been in the U.S. Because of the time
difference I wasn’t able to contact my daughter the whole time I was there.
Nobody was available for me (or anyone else) to do anything with anybody back
home, so that was just really tough.”
He mentioned that he didn’t go over to Singapore to make
friends, so I wondered if he kept in touch with any of the other fighters. “Oh,
definitely. I still keep I touch with Hino pretty regularly. I’m trying to go
down and meet up with him and do training with him. I talk to Ryan every other
day or so.”
He had some final words for everybody. “I want everybody to
know that what they saw last night on the show is definitely not the real
Alfredo Escalera. I’m a way better fighter than that, it wasn’t my night, and I
had an off night. I’ll be ready to step it up and bring it to the next one,
whoever I fight. I want an impressive stoppage in the next fight. If not, just
an impressive fight. I want to leave people talking about it for the next
couple of weeks, how impressive that fight was.”
Next week there is another doubleheader. We will see Elam
going against Hino and Hoye will face the replacement for Coyne, Godfrey.
