Jose Zepeda-Ivan Baranchyk: 2020 Boxing Fight of the Year
By Lance Pugmire Dec 28, 2020
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The thought arrived as Jose Zepeda and Ivan Baranchyk staged their classic fight-of-the-year performance on Oct. 3 in Las Vegas.
Here was boxing — the sport so many seem in a hurry to declare dead over whatever scandal or inconvenience comes its way — at its most awful hour. In the midst of the pandemic. Tested by COVID protocols. Void of fans.
Yet, never so brilliant.
In a gripping, back-and-forth junior-welterweight affair that featured eight knockdowns, Zepeda (33-2, 26 KOs) returned from getting dropped twice in the first round to knock out Baranchyk (20-2) in a frightening fifth-round finish that floored everyone who watched it, too.
Neither Zepeda nor Baranchyk earned more than $100,000 for a fight that was intended to move the winner closer to another crack at a previously failed title shot. Neither man will likely ever be inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
But now they are gloriously and forever linked.
“This fight came about in a pandemic, when a lot of people were being pinched and not a lot of people were fighting,” Baranchyk promoter Lou DiBella said. “If these guys didn’t have the balls, the professionalism and the desire to get back in the ring, to be willing to fight each other for pandemic money, then we never would’ve gotten this fight.”
Zepeda, 31, came to the bout following a 2015 shoulder dislocation that ended his attempt to win the vacant WBO belt from Terry Flanagan in 2015. He was then edged by majority decision against current two-belt champion Jose Ramirez in February 2019.
Enduring the injury caused Zepeda to ponder retirement. The disputed decision in Ramirez’s backyard didn’t warm his heart to the sport, either. But when Baranchyk’s heavy hands made him the first to drop Zepeda by a headshot, it was determination – not surrender – that overtook him.
Zepeda dropped Baranchyk in each of the next four rounds and referee Kenny Bayless did a masterful job letting the action play out to a fitting conclusion in the fifth.
“We weren’t even boxing anymore. We were both looking for the knockout,” Zepeda said.
As he hit the deck himself in the second and then was rocked back to the ropes by a right hand in the fifth round, Zepeda resolved, “I either knock him out or he’s going to knock me out … .”
By whipping a forceful left hand to the head, Zepeda finished off Baranchyk, who crashed backward, his right leg buckling at the knee as he remained down for several pensive minutes before opening two swollen eyelids to reveal he was fine.
“If I was a movie producer and I was filming a fight like that, people would say, ‘Come on … ,’” said veteran fight promoter Bob Arum, who was ringside that night. “Nobody would believe that shyt. It doesn’t happen that way. And then to top it all off, with the last punch, it looked like Baranchyk was dead, that he wasn’t breathing. He was out for like five minutes. Everybody was worried. It was almost like that fight was scripted by a bad director and bad producer because it was so unrealistic.”
Arum said the fight should serve as a constant reminder to himself and fellow promoters to make bouts that are determined more by the quality of the matchmaking than by an eye toward ensuring victory.
“You’re better off spending your money for a fight like that, with two really good professionals going at it and giving the fans what they really want to see – tremendous, exciting entertainment,” Arum said. “It showed what boxing at that level is all about: courageous guys willing to risk everything and refusing to take a step back.”
The promoter was rewarded for his work by hearing that ESPN chairman James Pitaro, in his year-end recap with executives, touted boxing as one of the few pandemic success stories. Pitaro said viewership of ESPN’s Saturday night fights increased 40 percent from the year before.
DiBella said he was confident from the time he discussed the match with Top Rank matchmaker Brad Goodman that “it would be World War III.”
“The old boxing writer Michael Katz would call me when I’d make a bloodbath fight (in DiBella’s former television role) at HBO – he loved that type of fight, as every fan does – and he’d call that a ‘Marquise de Sade special,’” DiBella said in reference to the French philosopher whose descriptions of sexual perversion gave rise to the term “sadism.”
“That fight was warfare at a very high level of balls and skill. It was brutal with so much give and take and heart, and neither guy willing to quit. It was two warriors making a fight that, for those who watched it, they’ll never forget it. And that’s the sign of a truly great fight and one that fans will make a point of going back and rewatching in the future.”
Ivan Baranchyk lands a punch on Jose Zepeda in their junior welterweight bout at MGM Grand Garden Arena. (Mikey Williams / Top Rank via Getty Images)
Zepeda and Baranchyk were dispatched to the same nearby Las Vegas hospital after the bout, and as Zepeda overheard a doctor telling Baranchyk the staff was reviewing a CT scan to see if any brain bleeding had occurred, he worried about what his own scan would reveal.
Zepeda then pulled back the curtain separating their hospital beds and told his fellow combatant, “Great fight. It was an honor being in the ring with you.”
Baranchyk nodded affirmatively and returned the compliment.
DiBella spoke often over the following week to Baranchyk, whose prior defeat was to unbeaten, two-belt 140-pound champion Josh Taylor.
“He had a scary night in the hospital when there were concerns initially, but the next day as he took it all in, he was sort of the happy warrior,” DiBella said. “He was happy to be out of the hospital. He was happy to go back to his wife. He was happy not to have gotten a terrible prognosis. And he was happy that he and Zepeda had put on a historic fight.
“When you fight a fight like that, you know it’s special. Zepeda won it, but they both knew that was something that happens once in a career.”
Although Zepeda-Baranchyk intoned comparisons to the famed Arturo Gatti-Micky Ward trilogy, neither Arum nor DiBella is interested in making an immediate rematch.
“Gatti-Ward was amazing, but those fights took a toll,” DiBella reminded.
Said Arum: “I don’t know if Baranchyk is going to fight again. I’m not a doctor, but if I were to put him on any of my cards, I would want the best doctors in the world looking at him to make sure it’s safe. Otherwise, it could be an accident waiting to happen. You certainly don’t want to put him right back in that fight again.”
Zepeda, meanwhile, is in prime position to meet the winner of the 2021 junior-welterweight full unification between Ramirez and Taylor. He could also be the man who first meets unified lightweight champion Teofimo Lopez, should Lopez move up in weight in 2021.
Zepeda-Baranchyk tops a field of fight-of-the-year contenders that included Juan Francisco Estrada’s stoppage of Carlos Cuadras in their super-flyweight rematch, heavyweight Alexander Povetkin’s fifth-round knockout of Dillian Whyte, Gervonta Davis’ super-featherweight knockout of four-division champion Leo Santa Cruz and Jermall Charlo’s middleweight title defense over Sergiy Derevyanchenko.
(Top photo: Mikey Williams / Top Rank)
" Bernard Hopkins
..beterbiev doesnt have time on his side man..the man rules 175 but his age and the right puncher will catch up to him soon
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