This article by George Kimball is on the SweetScience.com website at:www.thesweetscience.com/boxing-article/3817/fiorentino-decisions-clampitt-barnburner/PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Every matchmaker’s dream is to put together a Fight of the Year, but having done so, CES’ Ted Panagiotis is unlikely to be basking in much glory around the house in the coming weeks. Once Jaime Clampitt’s right paw heals again, she may use it to smack her husband around the family home for having put her in with Missy Fiorentino.
Raising female boxing to a new art form, Fiorentino was a human buzzsaw, fearlessly bulling her way inside to throw lighting-quick and precise combinations as she wrested the IBWF lightweight title from Clampitt in the main event of Jimmy Burchfield’s Pro/Am card at the Rhode Island Convention Center Thursday night.
Clampitt, a Rhode Island-based Canadian, and Fiorentino, from nearby Cranston, had been away from one another this long not only because they toiled for the same promoter, but because they were comfortably separated by a couple of weight divisions. With Fiorentino moving up and Clampitt moving down on the scale, the decision was taken to throw them in together at 135 pounds and let the Best Girl Win.
Both had earlier won IWBF titles in the same arena earlier in their careers: Three years ago Clampitt beat Eliza Olson to win the vacant 140-pound belt, only to lose it to England’s Jane Couch in her first defense, at Foxwoods. Last August she won the vacant lightweight title, stopping Shelby Walker in four, but had been out of action since with a hand injury.
Fiorentino, also promoted by Burchfield’s CES but trained by Peter Manfredo Sr., dropped a hotly disputed decision to Emiko Raika in a 2004 fight in Kyoto for the vacant featherweight title, but last year gained the 126-pound title when she defeated Esther Schouten at the Convention Center.
At the outset Clampitt boxed superbly, and made her 3¾ pound weight advantage seem even greater. Even in the first couple of rounds Fiorentino was probably throwing, and landing, more punches, but Clampitt seemed stronger (“She is,” explained Manfredo) and her blows more damaging.
But in the third Fiorentino was able to take charge, hurling herself inside Clampitt’s defenses. Clampitt may well have reinjured her right hand around this point as well, but in any case, once Fiorentio got on the inside and started winging all those multiple-punch combinations, Clampitt had no ready answer but to keep swinging. Thus did it become a fight of Missy Fiorentino’s making.
No, she wasn’t trying to turn it into a Pier Six brawl, she said later, “but we did want to keep the pressure on her.”
Manfredo credited the experience Fiorentino picked up in California last month when she and Providence cruiserweight Matt Godfrey spent two and a half weeks sparring with the animals in Freddy Roach’s Wild Card Gym.
“Missy sparred every day, with five or six different girls, most of them 150-160 pounders,” reported Manfredo. “
The 29-year-old Fiorentino, a college graduate, talks like a librarian but fights like a street mugger. She was mildly surprised to find Clampitt as willing as she was to allow the contest to turn into the sort of slugfest it did, since it played right into Missy’s hands.
Once she got the upper hand, said Fiorentino, “the important thing was for me to stay calm. When I get to excited sometimes I get wild and sloppy.”
Although Clampitt staged a mini-rally in the final round, the verdict was close but unanimous: Ed Scunzio and Dr. Clark Sammartino had it 96-94, Walter Stone 97-94, all for Fiorentino. The Sweet Science had Fiorentino winning 97-94.
The new champion extended her record to 14-1, while Clampitt fell to 16-4-1.
A disconsolate Clampitt remained in her dressing room afterward, but when trainer Chuck Sullivan met with the press afterward he was asked what Fiorentino-Clampitt bout had done for women’s boxing.
“You saw the fight,” he replied. “There were what, ten fights on tonight’s show? What was the best fight?”
No argument about that. The ladies put on a better show than the 18 men who performed on the card could muster. It was not only the best fight of the night, it may well have been the best women’s bout of the year.
Although there was no live television, the fight will be shown via tape-delay on “A Ring of their Own,” so there will be an opportunity to see what you missed. We’d be interested in having CompuBox’ Bob Connobio submit this one to an ex post facto punch count. Unless we miss our guess, Fiorentino had to have set some kind of record for punches thrown in ten two-minute rounds.
