Collier Gives Garcia His First Lesson in Losing

Blinky Rodriguez, manager of heavyweight Alex Garcia, had compared his fighter’s Tuesday night 10-round main event at the Reseda Country Club against Dee Collier to going to school.

The result: High marks for the teacher, low marks for the pupil and lots of homework ahead.

Matched against the more inexperienced Collier, Garcia lost his first professional fight when the bout was stopped after eight rounds because of a deep cut over Garcia’s right eye.

But even before sustaining the cut in the sixth round, Garcia, 215, seemed unable to handle the 222-pound Collier, a former state champion who can list Tex Cobb among his previous victims.

Garcia, on the other hand, had mostly fought opponents who were barely household names in their own household.

“Alex went to school on this one,” Rodriguez said, “and he’s going to be the better for it. Collier is slick and cagey. More than anything else, the experience factor counted most. Now it’s back to the drawing board.”

Garcia wasn’t even the toughest opponent Collier faced Tuesday. Keep in mind, this is a man who arose just past midnight Tuesday morning, went to work at 3 a.m. on his job as a corrections officer at a prison facility on Terminal Island and put in 8 hours.

Then, at 1 p.m., Collier went home and rested up a bit before going to his second job. Talk about moonlighting. Imagine if he had been well rested.

Collier first opened the cut over Garcia’s eye in the sixth round. Dr. Robert Karns, the ringside physician, examined it after the seventh round, but allowed the bout to continue. By the eighth, however, the cut had widened and the flowing blood was causing Garcia with his vision.

Garcia, 11-1, received $3,000 for the fight. Collier (11-8 with 6 knockouts) pocketed $2,000.

“I don’t know what kind of a fighter he thought I was,” Collier said. “I knew he had a strong right hand. So I just stayed away, moved from side to side and used my jab. That’s the same way I’ll fight Mike Tyson if I ever meet him.”

Despite his performance, Tuesday, don’t look for a Collier-Tyson bout in the near future.

On the undercard, Floyd Weaver, a junior middleweight, knocked out Enrique Luna of Mexico at 1:45 of the first round of a scheduled 6-rounder to improve his record to 7-1-1 with 5 knockouts. Luna went down 3 times in the bout, suffering his initial loss in 6 decisions.

Troy Weaver, fighting as a super middleweight, also knocked out his opponent, stopping Sal Montana of Mexico at 1:14 of the first round of another scheduled 6-rounder. This Weaver is also 7-1-1. Montana, who was also dropped earlier in the round, is 7-3.

The only losing Weaver Tuesday night was ironically the only brother to enter the night unbeaten. Middleweight Lloyd had won his first 4 fights, 3 by knockout, before Oscar Pena of San Antonio put him down three times, the clincher coming 2:49 into the third round of the scheduled 6-rounder. Pena improved to 10-3-1 with 9 knockouts.

In the other preliminary bout, junior featherweight Gabriel Ruelas of North Hollywood kept his perfect record intact at 5-0 by winning a unanimous decision over Juvenal Molina (6-13-3) of East Los Angeles.