Terry Norris vs Luis Santana 3

Terry Norris regained the WBC super-welterweight championship from Luis Santana at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas on 19 August 1995, stopping the Dominican after two minutes and nine seconds of the second round. Referee Joe Cortez intervened after Santana had been knocked down for the third time in the round. Norris weighed 152lb, two pounds lighter than the champion, and entered with a record of 38 victories and six defeats. Santana, making the second defence of the title, stood at 40 wins, 15 losses and two draws.

The bout was the third consecutive meeting between the pair and had become necessary because Norris had twice found a way to lose contests he was plainly capable of winning. In Mexico City the previous November, he surrendered the championship by disqualification after striking Santana behind the head in the fifth round. Santana remained on the canvas and was declared unable to continue. Their April rematch at Caesars Palace ended almost as strangely when Norris hit Santana after the bell closing the third round and was again disqualified. Thus Santana arrived as champion with two official victories over Norris, although neither had been achieved by superior boxing. The chief question before the third meeting was not whether Norris possessed the greater speed and skill, but whether he could maintain sufficient discipline to complete the business legally.

Norris began with a restraint absent from the earlier contests. He used his left jab, moved in and out of range and made Santana follow rather than rushing immediately into a reckless exchange. The challenger’s hands were markedly faster, and he found the target with straight rights and short hooks whenever Santana attempted to set himself. Santana tried to advance behind a high guard, looking for an opportunity to counter, but his feet were too slow to place him within useful punching distance. Norris repeatedly beat him to the punch and then stepped away before Santana could reply.

The closing portion of the opening round brought the first serious trouble. Norris increased his tempo and drove Santana towards the ropes with quick combinations. Santana’s guard absorbed some of the attack, but enough punches came around and through it to leave him unsteady. Norris resisted the temptation to continue after the bell, an elementary detail which had become unusually important in this rivalry. All three judges—Kurt Stroer, Carol Castellano and Horacio Castilla—scored the round 10–9 for Norris. The figures scarcely conveyed the difference in speed or the difficulty Santana had experienced during the final exchanges.

Norris resumed the attack in the second without abandoning his balance. The first knockdown came when his faster hands caught Santana before the champion could establish his stance. Santana rose but had not recovered his legs, and Norris closed the distance with greater urgency. A further series of punches sent him down for the second time. Santana regained his feet again, showing courage but little ability to defend himself against the next assault. Norris remained directly in front of him, throwing compact combinations rather than the uncontrolled blows which had caused so much difficulty in the first two matches.

The third knockdown ended the contest. Norris drove Santana backwards and landed another succession of clean punches, dropping him near the ropes. Cortez did not begin a prolonged count or allow the champion another opportunity to continue. Having watched Santana go down three times in little more than two minutes, he waved the fight over at 2:09. There were no late punches, rabbit blows or disputed rulings. For the first time in the trilogy, Norris’s superiority was expressed in the official result rather than obscured by his own misconduct.

The contest occupied an unusual place on the programme supporting Mike Tyson’s return against Peter McNeeley. Norris and Santana fought early in the day on an ABC broadcast used to promote the evening’s pay-per-view show. Spectators were admitted without charge for this portion of the card before the MGM Grand Garden Arena was cleared and readied for customers paying for the Tyson event. The arrangement gave a world-title fight the air of both a public performance and an advertisement, but Norris treated the occasion with the seriousness demanded by his previous failures.

For Santana, the defeat brought an abrupt end to a championship reign founded upon two disqualifications. He had been a capable and experienced professional, with an earlier unsuccessful challenge against Simon Brown for the IBF welterweight title, but he was overmatched whenever Norris remained within the rules. Norris, meanwhile, became a three-time WBC champion and immediately dismissed any prospect of a fourth meeting. His relief was understandable. He had required three contests to establish what the action had suggested from the beginning: that his speed, punching variety and athletic superiority were beyond Santana’s means. Norris later added the IBF championship by defeating Paul Vaden, but the Santana trilogy remained a warning that talent could be undone by impatience as readily as by an opponent’s fists.

Terry Norris vs Luis Santana III was the fight when Norris finally did what he should have done at the first and second attempts. Luis Santana entered as WBC champion with two victories over Norris, but neither result proved he was the better fighter. Norris had thrown away both contests through stupidity—first with a rabbit punch, then by hitting after the bell. When a man has already been disqualified in another earlier bout, that is not bad luck. It is a lack of discipline.

Norris was one of the finest attacking fighters of the 1990s when his head was right. His hand speed, combinations and ability to change angles were far beyond anything Santana possessed. This time he boxed under control, dominated the opening round and resisted the urge to keep punching once the bell sounded. That should not deserve a medal, but with Norris it counted as progress.

In the second, the class difference became embarrassing. Norris dropped Santana three times, and Joe Cortez stopped it at 2:09. Santana was experienced and tough, but he was too slow and had no answer once Norris began putting combinations together. The result was not revenge so much as a correction.

The strange trilogy damaged Norris more than it did Santana because it exposed the flaw that had followed him throughout his career. He had championship ability, but too often fought as though the rules were an inconvenience. On this afternoon, he remembered his discipline and looked every inch the superior fighter.