Top boxer beaten

Press, 9 June 1980, Page 3

Top boxer beaten

By

JOE HARNETT

The Olympic nomination reject heavyweight boxer George Stankovich gave no indication of medal-winning ability when he was beaten by a young Australian, Terry Archer, in the New ZealandAustralian invitation boxing tournament at Timaru on Saturday. Stankovich, who outweighed his taller opponent by 16 kg, seemed unfit and adopted a mauling style, crowding Archer to the ropes and hooking and ripping to head and body. Many of the body blows were in the kidney region and the New Zealand champion was twice warned for these illegal punches. Part-way through the second round Archer opened out with long, straight, left punches and began to make up the leeway of lost points. In the last round he swarmed over Stankovich, who had visibly tired badly. A Wellington Samoan, Johnny Tapua, made no race of it when he easily beat the highly rated Olympic lightheavyweight from Brisbane, Benny Pike. Tapua constantly beat the rugged Pike to the

punch, staggering him badly with hard, right punches in round two.

The middleweight Andrew Stankovich, a well built southpaw from Auckland, was a little too strong for the up-and-coming New South Welshman Neil Karlic, winning the first and last round to Avin on points decision.

A Timaru lightweight, Barry Galbraith, was all aggression in his battle with New South Wales champion Fred Camp. Galbraith led with hard left-right combinations but Camp showed commendable agility in avoiding most of the heavier blows.

Camp attacked strongly at the start of the second round but Galbraith soon took over the role of aggressor and hit the Australian with a splendid left hook to the jaw, dropping to the canvas for an eight count. Soon after Camp was again in trouble from a left-right combination to the jaw and after another eight count the referee, Mr S. C. Ashton, stopped the contest in Galbraith’s favour. Richard Pittman a flashy featherweight from Timaru, was too experienced for

young Brett Young, of New South Wales. Pittman used speed and ringcraft to unsettle Young and comfortably took the first round. Early in round two Pittman crossed to Young’s head with a hard right crosspunch, putting the Australian down for a compulsory count of eight. Seconds later Young was again down from a similar punch and his trainer indicated to the referee, Mr P. Leonard, that his man had had enough. Peter Warren, New Zealand’s bantamweight 1 champion, was the narrowest of winners over Australia’s Terry Boney. Boney and his trainer were clearly distressed with Warren’s boxing and leaning tactics and Mr Leonard’s inaction against them. The national intermediate bantamweight title-holder, Ricky Drew, of Timaru, met a human beanpole in Kevin Boney, of New South Wales. Boney started well but the confident youngster Drew moved in with two hard left punches to the head followed by a crashing right hook to the jaw to put the Aboriginal boxer down for the full count.