ASTON, Pa. — Jose Canseco was primed for some more bashing.
Instead of grabbing his Louisville Slugger to send a baseball into orbit, Canseco taped his wrists and put on some boxing gloves to try and send former Partridge kid Danny Bonaduce into a daze.
The former Oakland A’s slugger showed he has only warning track power in the ring. He staggered Bonaduce with a couple of big blows in Saturday night’s three-round fight, but failed to deliver the knockout punch and the celebrity boxing match ended in a deflating draw.
“He hit me harder than I’ve ever been hit my entire life,” Bonaduce said.
Bonaduce’s nose was bloodied and the two hugged after the bout. All that was missing in this D-list celebrity boxing bout was the reality TV cameras.
“If there’s a knockout, it’ll probably be me,” Bonaduce said before the bout.
Bonaduce never looked in any serious trouble and Canseco seemed hesitant to go after him with ferocious cuts.
Canseco took his second shot at celebrity boxing after he was whupped by former Philadelphia Eagle Vai Sikahema in his debut boxing match last July. Bonaduce, who played Danny Partridge on the “The Partridge Family,” is like Mike Tyson in his heyday in the outlandish celebrity boxing circuit. He’s beat Barry “Greg Brady” Williams and Donny Osmond.
Maybe those two 1970s TV stars combined have biceps as big as the hulking Canseco’s. The 6-foot-4 Canseco weighed in at 260 pounds. Bonaduce is 5-6, 180 pounds.
“I truly don’t know that I can damage him,” Bonaduce said. “He’s just too big. I can just outpoint him.”
He didn’t much time to play rope-a-dope against Canseco. The bout featuresd only three, 1-minute rounds. Canseco sparred early Saturday, ran 10 miles and proclaimed himself in top shape to last 3 minutes, if needed.
And no, neither boxer was drug tested.
“Thank God, no,” said promoter Damon Feldman, laughing.
Canseco fidgeted with his headgear in his dressing room about 90 minutes before the fight and listened to possible entrance music off a friend’s iPhone. He didn’t even want to wear headgear — though it surely would have come in handy when the baseball knocked off his noggin and over the fence in his playing days.
The 44-year-old Canseco took the fight because he’s strapped for cash and claims to have squandered nearly $45 million in a career where he hit 462 career home runs. Bonaduce had more of a bucket list reason to slug it out with baseball’s most notorious Bash Brother.
“I’ll be 50 in August, so I am closer to death then to youth and I haven’t knocked out anybody this big yet,” Bonaduce said.
Surely Reuben Kincaid would have advised him to book a different gig.
Former WWE wrestler Sandman was the headliner on an undercard stuffed with mostly local boxers. Vince Papale, the former Philadelphia Eagle who inspired the movie “Invincible,” was the guest referee in the main event.
“Their biggest concern is that I’m not taking this seriously and I am,” Papale said.
It’s all fun until someone gets hurt. Papale pointed to six stitches under his lip from when he wrestled Victor the Bear in a halftime match at a 76ers game as proof that anyone can get hurt in an exhibition match.
“That was probably the most stupid thing I’ve done,” he said. “This is one of the most unique.”
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