Stunning boxing upset

Press, 2 April 1980, Page 44

Stunning boxing upset

NZPA-Reuter New York Mike Weaver lifted John Tate’s heavyweight title in a stunning upset, but Larry Holmes successfully defended his version of the heavyweight crown as he stopped Leroy Jones yesterday. In a boxing extravaganza that featured five world title fights in three cities, the 27-year-old Weaver made the biggest news. Weaver shocked the crowd in Knoxville, Tennessee, as he came back from the brink of defeat to knock out Tate in the fifteenth and final round to claim the World Boxing Association .(W.8.A.) title.

In Las Vegas, Nevada, Holmes, aged 30, held on to his World Boxing Council (W.8.C.) crown by halting the ponderous Jones in the eighth round of a match that the champion totally dominated. Another champion was dethroned in Knoxville as Eddie Gregory stopped his fellow American, Marvin Johnson, in the eleventh round to win the W.B.A. light-heavyweight title. Sugar Ray Leonard had probably the easiest night of any champion in action when he knocked out Britain’s < Dave (Boy) Green with a powerful left hook in the ' fourth round of their <

scheduled 15-tound match for the W.B.C. welterweight title. The crowd at capital centre in Landover, Maryland, saw the lightning-fast Leonard toy with Green for the first three rounds and then apply the crusher in the fourth. ' The fifth championship match—and the only one not shown on television in the U-ited States — saw the American, Marvin Camel, win a unanimous, 15-round, points decision over Mate Parlov, of Yugoslavia, at Caesar’s Palace ip Las Vegas to become champion of the W.B.C.’s newly created cruiserweight division..