Bryce Mills KO1 Aaron Aponte... Every so often--but not often enough--something happens to make me fall in love all over again with the sometimes wonderful, sometimes wretched world of professional boxing. That's what happened to me last Friday night at the Turning Stone Casino in Verona, NY, when a straight right hand from Bryce Mills landed on Aaron Aponte's chin. As Aponte headed down, Mills clocked him with a beauty of a left hook and it was all over at 2.59 of the first round. The way the crowd reacted you would have thought we were in Times Square on New Years Eve. [My wife] Linda and I jumped into each other's arms just as we had nine years ago this month when Jason Sosa came from far behind to knock out Javier Fortuna in Beijing to win the WBA junior lightweight title. But this was not a world title fight. Rather it was simply a scheduled eight-round junior welterweight contest, buried on the non-TV portion of the Salita Boxing Promotions card, but it became so much more.
Mills is from nearby Liverpool, NY, and he is The Franchise at Turning Stone. That right-left combination transformed him from a popular ticket seller into a legitimate threat at 140 pounds. He is 19-1 with 6 KOs, and people are going to look at him differently now. I had obsessed about this fight for weeks, fearing I had made a mistake by agreeing to have him fight another young prospect. Aponte, 23, of Hialeah, FL, was 12-2-1 with 3 KOs, against better opposition than Mills had fought. In addition, Aponte had an extensive amateur career with several regional and national titles under his belt. Why not fight a grizzled veteran on the way down than another youngster on the rise? But trainers James Andrello and Armando Munoz both liked the fight so I went ahead, nervously. Then the bell rang and the 6-foot Aponte was jabbing and moving and Bryce had some difficulty cutting off the ring and getting inside to work Aponte's body. With time running out in the first round, Bryce caught Aponte in a neutral corner and bingo!
Aponte was motionless for about six seconds before he struggled to rise but it was all over. I am not ashamed to say that after 56 years in this business I was so happy I could have cried. I've been close to a lot of fighters in my career. I'm not going to tell you that the Mills family is the nicest I've ever worked with, but I will tell you that no group was ever nicer. His dad, Steven Mills, his mom, Donelle, are almost like family at this point and I couldn't have been happier for them.
Bryce wanted this test. He refuses to fight guys with losing records. He wants to find out now if he has what it takes to be a champion. His attitude reminds me of another fighter I promoted, a guy by the name of Jeff Chandler, who once lectured me for matching him with an inferior opponent years ago in Atlantic City. "Don't ever embarrass me again in front of my fans," he said. I remember in 1983 when he was training to defend against tough Gaby Canizales, Jeff took a shovel to the gym after a snowstorm and shoveled his way to the front door so he wouldn't miss a day of training. Bryce has that same attitude. And the best part: He's only 23.
