Just call it The Punch. Not because it was the hardest punch David Reid ever threw. It wasn't. Not because it came in the biggest fight of his life, though it was.
Just call it The Punch because Reid's stunning one-punch knockout of Alfredo Duvergel to win the gold medal Sunday may end up being known as that, the most dramatic moment ever in American Olympic boxing."You're a bad boy," Muhammad Ali told Reid as the bedlam began to settle down in the Alexander Memorial Coliseum.
Indeed he was, thanks to a crushing overhand right that came out of nowhere to save Reid from certain defeat and save the U.S. team from its first boxing gold medal shutout since 1948.
Reid had taken a beating from the Cuban the round before, scoring no points and having to take a standing 8-count after Duvergel rocked him with a left hand.
"I was saying to myself, all you need to do is get it in," Reid said. "I just had to go for the gold."
The right hand caught Duvergel flush on the face, sending the Cuban sprawling face-first to the canvas. Duvergel tried to get up, fell back down again, then struggled to his feet at the count of eight.
He was badly dazed, though, and referee Simeon Stojadinov of Bulgaria needed only one look before waving the 156-pound bout to a close at 36 seconds.
"When he went down and I saw him try to get up and he fell down again, I knew he was really hurt," Reid said.
Reid was trailing badly, 16-6, when Duvergel made the mistake of trying to mix it up instead of circling and moving to protect an almost insurmountable lead.
It was a mistake that would cost him the gold medal when Reid, stepping inside a left hand, unleashed a long overhand right that sent the Cuban to the canvas.
"I was going for the home run," Reid said. "I was down 10 points, and it's hard to score 10 points in a round."
Between rounds, coach Al Mitchell had told the 19-year-old from Philadelphia that his only chance to win the gold was to knock Duvergel out. Cuban boxers rarely get knocked down and are almost never stopped.
"I said, hey, we can't win this using boxing skills, you got to meet him with the right hand," Mitchell said. "He did it dead on the nose."
Reid leaped weeping into Mitchell's arms as the sellout crowd went wild. Ali was among those watching from a seat near ringside, and Reid went over to greet him after the win. "It was a very special moment," Reid said.
Reid's punch saved the United States, in an Olympics on its own soil, from the embarrassment of not winning a boxing gold medal for the first time since 1948.
The lone gold, along with five bronze medals, gave the United States twice its medal count of the 1992 games. Cuba finished with four gold and three silver medals.