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Ballard appeals loss to Camacho
The bout may be over, but the fight is just beginning.
On July 18, former Leesburg resident Perry "The Punisher" Ballard fought Hector "Macho" Camacho in Houston. Ballard, who entered the ring as the World Boxing Empire light-middleweight champion with a 20-1 record, was valiant, but his corner threw in the towel during the seventh round.
"Wow. Incredible," Ballard said July 22 as he was driving back to his Martinsburg, W.Va., home from a Hagerstown, Md., hospital, where he had an MRI taken, revealing a cracked nasal cavity and a cracked forehead.
"I have fought some rough and tough fighters, but he's the dirtiest fighter there is,” Ballard said.
Camacho responded in a telephone interview that if his actions had been that egregious, the referee and the commissioner would have stopped the bout.
"There was no way he was gonna beat me anyway," Camacho said, repeatedly pointing out that Ballard's corner threw in the towel. "I was too smart, too fast, too experienced. If I kept on hitting him, I would have killed him."
The self-managed Ballard and his legal counsel have filed an appeal to the Texas Athletic Commission to have the bout's decision, a technical knock-out in Camacho's favor, overturned to a no-contest, permitting Ballard to retain his title. If that fails, Ballard said he intends to take the matter to the Houston Circuit Court.
Camacho's manager, Jeff Phannes -- whom Ballard called "a gentleman" -- spoke diplomatically of the appeal.
"I don't have a problem with it," Phannes said. "If Perry thinks that Hector did something illegal, then it should be taken to appeal."
Ballard said his attorney, Wendle Cook, who was among the 2,500 in attendance at Reliant Stadium, told him he stopped counting Camacho's head-butts after 10. Ballard's allegations also include an illegal shoulder to his jaw and frequent holding on -- all out of the ring referee's view.
"He does absolutely anything to get you off your game," Ballard said. "He head-butted me so much I have a crack in the front of my skull."
Camacho responds that Ballard was the first to head-butt, and that any foul was unintentional.
Thirteen stitches were sewn along Ballard's eye, plus six on the top of his head. Ballard's jaw was dislocated -- by Camacho's shoulder, he said -- in the second round.
After the round, Ballard jammed his own jaw back into place, he said.
"I'm a fighter," he said. "I continued to fight."
Ballard said his doctor told him the injuries could not have been caused by punches, but from bone-on-bone contact.
Camacho, who called Ballard a "sore loser," said any injury caused to Ballard's head or jaw was exclusively from his fists.
"The video and my medical records will vindicate me 100 percent," declared Ballard, who said of Camacho, "He's a little twerp, is what he is."
The bout was shown live on pay-per-view via several satellite media outlets, including Dish Network and Comcast SportsNet.
Despite the experience, the three-time champion Ballard gave Camacho, now a 10-time title-holder, some credit.
"He's the most technically sound fighter I've ever gone against. I'm not a disgruntled fighter," Ballard said. "But how can you perform when someone's head-butting and holding you the whole time?"
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