Razzberry for Ricardo

Ricardo ("Pajarito") Moreno, 21, idol of Mexico, flung his 125 lbs. out of his corner and rocked World Featherweight Champion Hogan Bassey with a couple of punches that hung the little Nigerian rubber-legged on the ropes. "Stop zee fight! Stop zee fight before he keels heem!" screamed Pajarito's souped-up fans.

Unfortunately for Pajarito. neither the referee nor Bassey was listening. After a between-rounds breather in Los Angeles' Wrigley Field last week. Bassey came back to throw so many punches so fast that his muscular Mexican opponent might as well have been tilting with a windmill. A savage uppercut separated Moreno from his mouthpiece with such violence that third-row fans caught the spray. Even when he was completely off balance, Bassey almost removed Moreno from his haircut with a pair of left hooks and a right uppercut delivered in split-second succession. At the end of the third round Pajarito went down for good.

Pajarito's defeat was a national disaster to a loud army of Mexicans who had been stampeding northward for days. They had jammed up at border stations, scrapped for space on airlines. So many of them swarmed into the stadium that when the band struck up The Star-Spangled Banner to start the brawl, the music was drowned out by their shouts of "Down in front!" After Moreno was peeled off the canvas and the announcer asked for "a hand for the beaten boy," the leftfield cheering section responded with a raucous Mexican razzberry.

Pajarito and his countrymen had been completely convinced by a compact (5 ft. 3 in.; 124 Ibs.) little man whose square name is Okon Bassey Asuque, Esq., M.B.E.* His ebony fists are probably the swiftest pair of weapons in the prize ring, and his Oxford-accented speech is certainly the rarest: "When I awoke the morning of the fight and saw it was raining, I actually wept. I was emotionally prepared to fight that night, and a delay would have been annoying."

Born 25 years ago in Calabar, Nigeria, Hogan (an Anglicized version of his first name Okon) began boxing when he was twelve. In the ten years since he started fighting for pay, he has moved to Liverpool and has put together a record of 62 fights with only ten losses. He won the featherweight title last summer by beating Algeria's Cherif Hamia. And last week not even Los Angeles' visiting Mexicans would challenge Bassey's manager, George Biddies, when he announced elegantly: "I rather fancy that Hogan will be about some time as featherweight champion."

*Member of the Order of the British Empire, an honor bestowed four months ago by Queen Elizabeth for Bassey's services to Nigerian sports.

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