After his second fight at the elite national boxing championships Thursday in Mississauga, Ont.,Kenny Lally looked a bit like Popeye.
A punch above the eye drew blood, but despite the best efforts of Rodolfo Valasquez of Hamilton, Ont., to reopen the cut Lally suffered above his right eye the previous day it wasn't enough to derail Lally's plans to become a national champion for the sixth time.
Lally fought well enough to score a unanimous decision over Valasquez to advance to the 56-kilogram gold-medal match Saturday afternoon against Bradley Wilcox of Hamilton.
"I look like the guy on Goonies, one side of my face is perfectly fine and the other side is hideous," laughed Lally from his hotel room.
Midway through the third and last round, Valasquez, the national Golden Gloves champion, succeeded in drawing blood from the area he had sewn up with seven internal stitches and some glue after his fight on Wednesday. But the original cut was held together by the stitches and the flow of blood did not obscure Lally's vision, so the fight was allowed to continue.
"Rodolfo is a lot shorter than me, but the way he's built he can block a lot of my shots," said Lally. "He's a good technical fighter and he was definitely aiming for my eye. He caught me in the eye in the third round and I felt the blood trickle down and I picked it up and we got the job done.
"I've got all [Friday] to rest and my weight's fine, so we'll just work on my eye."
Lally was left with a painful bruise, however the damage wasn't significant enough to medically prevent him from fighting in the final.
"Rodolfo was nice and tight with good defence and he gave us more trouble than we thought, just because he kept banging on Kenny's eye," said Bob Pegues, Lally's Inner City Boxing Club coach and head coach of the B.C. team.
"It swelled up but the stitches are still good. The issue is keeping it from swelling shut so he won't have a vision issue on Saturday."
Wilcox defeated Francois Pratt of Trois-Rivieres, Que., in the other 56 kg semifinal Thursday. Nine years ago at the cadet/junior national championships in Prince George, Lally defeated Steve Wilcox, Bradley's older brother to win his first gold medal.
"It will be a technical fight but I've been through hell this tournament and there's no way I'm not getting that gold medal," Lally said.
Six B.C. boxers are fighting for gold and one advanced to the bronze medal round.
"This is the best we've ever done, the whole team is rocking," said Pegues.
