The Texas boy gave a great effort but was up against an all time great.
WBC World Lightweight Title
February 13, 2022
Beaumont Civic Center
Beaumont, Texas, USA
Televised on CBS
Busceme was a decorated amateur, winning multiple regional, state, and national golden gloves titles, as well as a 1972 USA Boxing Olympic representative.
His Olympic loss was widely considered to have been a result of politics more than anything and he followed his amateur career with a solid professional career, winning all but three of his bouts coming into the Arguello match.
Arguello was already the 135 pound champion and was considered to be one of the best boxers in the world at the time. A tremendous boxer with power in both hands, he not only held the technical advantage over most of his opponents, but also could take a guy out at any time.
Busceme boxed well, displaying great footwork, movement, and straight punches, but Arguello was fighting at his pace, didn’t get hurt with anything, and was calmly walking down Busceme until he began to find his range and get in his rhythm.
Once Arguello was able to start landing clean shots it was only a matter of time until he closed the show, which he emphatically did in the sixth round.
Busceme fought well and displayed great boxing skill as far as punching technique, movement , and footwork, but he came up short because he didn’t have the power to keep Arguello from walking him down, and didn’t have the mid and short range game to keep Arguello from setting his feet.
All in all it was still a pretty good effort from Busceme when you consider the fact that Arguello was a beast at that time and no one had been able to handle him at that time.
