Every fighter’s goal is to win quickly and impressively. The earlier the bout ends, the better it looks on their resume. The more knockouts, the larger their next purse. Prosperity in the ring is always a good thing.
Just do not tell Maspeth junior middleweight James Moore.
Twelve times Moore has found himself in the squared circle since arriving in America by way of Arklow, Ireland, and nine times, he has ended the bout early. Only twice has he gone as far as six rounds. Nevertheless, as polished as the undefeated Moore has looked in the ring, the list of future opponents has thinned out.
Moreover, since he is unattached - Moore split amicably with Irish Ropes last year - the money is not there to draw respectable competition. Therefore, he often finds himself with short nights and little to work on, which was again the case last Thursday night at the Utopia Paradise Theater in the Bronx. In the fourth installment of Joe DeGuardia’s “Punchin’ at the Paradise” series, he stopped Chris Overbey of Sydney, Ohio in the third round.
Moore systematically broke down Overbey (8-7, 2 KOs), surprising the journeyman fighter by going to the head with a series of combination instead of his usual relentless body attack.
It worked. Moore sent him to the canvas first in the second round with a right uppercut and again in the third, when Moore ended Overbey’s night with a sharp left hook to the jaw.
The victory notwithstanding, he wasn’t satisfied. “It’s tough because I’m in a no-win situation,” Moore said. “I’m expected to knock him out. If [I] don’t knock him out, maybe I don’t hit that hard.”
He doesn’t plan to keep it this way. After returning from his honeymoon, he will sit down with manager Brian Burke to pick a promoter. DeGuardia, in addition to Lou DiBella, another local promoter, is reportedly interested in the power-punching Irishman.
“He’s a great prospect,” DeGuardia said.
“We have to do what’s best for me,” Moore said. “It’s not necessarily who’s going to get me the most money. It is who is offering the best card, the best opponent. At the end of the day, money is not the most important thing in the world. We’re going to look at the marketability [aspect].”
Burke mentioned fellow up-and-comers such as Kevin Finley (11-0, 8 KOs) and Pawel Wolak (16-0, 9 KOs) as possible opponents, sometime in October or November. There will be no warm up, Moore added. He is ready.
“If you want to win a world title, you have to fight someone sooner or later,” he said. “So I’d rather do it sooner rather than later. The fights they give me I am winning them easy enough. I want a challenge. I want to be pushed.”
Meanwhile, Moore’s Maspeth neighbor and longtime sparring partner, Ireland’s John Duddy, won his first fight abroad, knocking out Alessio Furlan in the 10th round at the National Stadium in Dublin, Ireland. Duddy improved to 21-0 with 15 KOs.
