Against Jacobs, Barclays Center was Quillin’s Temple of Gloom

BROOKLYN, N.Y. -- The best punch in boxing? It is perhaps a matter of personal preference. There is the left hook to the liver, which can paralyze an opponent as if he were instantly frozen. Some favor the uppercut to the solar plexus, which can suck the air out of the other guy’s lungs like an industrial-grade vacuum cleaner. There is, of course, the old standby, a crushing blow to the jaw, capable of sending someone crashing to the canvas like an imploded building.

But for those who have delivered it with telling effect, or to their regret been on the receiving end, the signature shot that almost always ensures one fighter’s victory and the other’s defeat is the one to the temple that lands flush and hard. It disconnects the wiring in the brain that controls equilibrium, causing a fighter to lurch about as if he were deep in the throes of a three-day drunk, or been hit in the butt with a tranquilizer dart meant to immobilize large animals.

Saturday night’s Showtime-televised WBA “regular” middleweight championship bout between titlist Daniel “The Miracle Man” Jacobs and former WBO middleweight champ Peter “Kid Chocolate” Quillin figured to end in something other than a decision; in 64 combined fights, they had totaled 50 knockouts. But nobody in the not-quite-sellout crowd in the Barclays Center could possibly have anticipated only 85 seconds of one-way action.

When Jacobs (now 31-1, 28 KOs) hurt the onrushing Quillin (32-1-1, 23 KOs) with a right to the left cheek a minute into the opening round, however, the scheduled 12-round bout immediately went from possible Indianapolis 500 to NHRA Top Fuel drag race. The final punch statistics showed Jacobs landing 27 of 53 (51%) to just 2 of 16 for Quillin (12%), the biggest trade imbalance since a group of Native Americans supposedly sold the island of Manhattan to the Dutch in 1626 for 60 guilders in trade goods, in legend and lore a sum of about $24. The gap in power shots was even more startling: 25 of 41 for Jacobs (61%) to 1 of 9 (11%) for the fast-melting “Kid Chocolate.”

Quillin clearly was in danger of not making it out of the first round, but given his status as an undefeated former world champion who, of course, had never lost as a professional, it seemed at least somewhat feasible that he might find a way to survive Jacobs’ onslaught. But then Jacobs removed the last vestiges of intrigue with two on-target right hands, the second of which was a winging right to the temple area. It was as fast-acting as if Jacobs had poured another gallon of whiskey down Quillin’s gullet through a funnel.

The temple shot that Jacobs ricocheted off Quillin’s skull caused the discombobulated challenger to turn his back and perform a little bunny hop, like the one that then-heavyweight champion Joe Frazier did when his motor functions were scrambled in his title-losing bout to George Foreman in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1973. Referee Harvey Dock stepped to the side, took one glance at the reeling Quillin and immediately waved his arms to signal the bout was over, causing Quillin partisans to scream in protest. But then they weren’t seeing what Dock had seen, the replay of which was shown on the big overhead screen shortly thereafter.

Quillin’s eyes were rolling around in his head like a pinwheel, a sure sign that he no longer was able to defend himself, or even see straight. Had the fight been allowed to continue—and, to his credit, Jacobs, who understood what had just happened, did not rush toward Quillin to emphatically finish off a man who was irretrievably beaten—the consequences could have been dire.

“Right on the temple,” Jacobs, interviewed in the ring by Showtime’s Jim Gray, said while checking out the video of the punch, or maybe both, that sealed the outcome. “That’s a good shot.”

Although the victory marked Jacobs’ third successful championship defense, beating Quillin presumably meant so much more to him than his prior title defenses against Sergio Mora and Caleb Truax, and not just because he earned a career-high $1.5 million. Heralded as the “Battle for Brooklyn,” this fight pitted Jacobs, who was born in the gritty Brownsville section of Brooklyn and has lived all of his 28 years in the borough, against the 32-year-old Quillin, who was born in Chicago, raised in Grand Rapids, Mich., and relocated to Brooklyn when he was 19. Not only was the bejeweled WBA belt at stake, but so was a “Champ of Brooklyn” belt that was presented to him by Eric Adams, the borough president, and Brett Yormark, the Chief Executive Officer of the Barclays Center.

Although Jacobs had stressed his homegrown status as a true Brooklynite, in contrast to Quillin, the relative Johnny-come-lately transplant, there was a noticeable lack of tension between the two fighters leading up to the moment of truth. Perhaps that is because neither fighter, although each is highly regarded, can be found on most so-called experts’ top 10 pound-for-pound lists, or because they are both on noticeably friendly terms, which made their encounter difficult to hype as an intra-borough blood feud.

“I told him I love him,” Jacobs, whose nickname owes to the fact he is a cancer survivor, told Gray when asked what he had told Quillin in their postfight embrace, allowing for enough time for Quillin to get his sea legs back under him. “He’s a brother of mine. He’s fighting for the same thing I’m fighting for. Me and Peter go back to the Golden Gloves days. I have nothing but the utmost respect for him and his family. I love him to death. But I knew that this fight would be my night.”

Quillin, for his part, did not rage against any perception of injustice done to him by Dock or the whims of fate. His thinking might have been fuzzy for a while, but not so much that he wasn’t aware that Dock had made the proper judgment call. Besides, there is always another day, another fight, another opportunity to make amends in the ring.

“This is what happens in the game of boxing,” he shrugged, adding that, “I can’t think of anyone better to lose to than Danny Jacobs.”

So what’s next for each man? Conceivably a rematch, given the fact that the quick, startling finish leaves open some possibility that the Battle for Brooklyn has yet to be fully resolved.

“I’ll definitely give him an opportunity (for a rematch),” Jacobs said when asked by Gray if a do-over was possible. “He gave me the opportunity. It’s up to my management. Obviously, I want to fight the best out there. But I’ll fight (Quillin) next, if that’s what they want.”

Don’t count on Jacobs-Quillin II any time soon, though. Immediate rematches of first-round knockouts are rarer than sightings of endangered whooping cranes in Brooklyn residents’ back yards, and haven’t been in vogue since Floyd Patterson mixed it up with Sonny Liston for a second time in 1963, with the same disastrous result. Quillin needs a couple of nice wins to scrub clean the memory of his swift exit against Jacobs, and “The Miracle Man” needs to build upon that momentum with victorious forays against fresh meat.

For now, though, a new Lord of Flatbush Avenue has been crowned and his name is Daniel Jacobs.

Bernard Fernandez, a five-term president of the Boxing Writers Association of America, received the Nat Fleischer Award from the BWAA in April 1999 for lifetime achievement and was inducted into the Pennsylvania Boxing Hall of Fame in 2005, as well as the New Jersey Boxing Hall of Fame in 2013. The New Orleans-born sports writer has worked in the industry since 1969 and pens a weekly column on the Sweet Science for Sherdog.com.