Reid plods past Brantley

Dean Juipe

Monday, July 9, 2001 | 9:43 a.m.

Call it a case of spontaneous role reversal, the loser acting as if his career had been rejuvenated while the winner hung his head and all but apologized for his performance.

David Reid won Sunday's main event at the Texas Station, taking a 10-round decision over Maurice Brantley, yet it certainly wasn't evident by their respective reactions.

Expected to not only win but look good and perhaps do it with the first-round knockout he predicted, Reid turned in another in what has become a series of unspectacular perfomances. In a super middleweight fight that was scored closer than most in the crowd envisioned, Reid prevailed by 5, 1 and 1 points on the judges' cards.

The Sun, perhaps graciously, had the former Olympic gold medalist up by a 99-90 count.

"I was very disappointed he didn't go," Reid said, referring to his failure to knock out an opponent who was ready-made for just that assignment. Brantley, 23-4 but with only eight KOs, had taken this fight on such short notice that he had a mere five days to train.

He was neither a big hitter nor technically sound.

"I was just about to give up boxing," he said afteward, somewhat jubilantly in spite of the loss in the nationally televised fight.

A real estate agent by trade, Brantley hadn't fought in a year and said only now is he motivated to give boxing another serious look.

Reid, meanwhile, hasn't knocked anyone out in more than three years and his record of 17-1 fails to reflect the fact he is unlikely to defeat a prominent fighter if given the chance.

"Not right now," he said, when asked if he was ready for a championship fight or an opponent of some renown.

Once the World Boxing Association champion at 147 pounds, Reid is now carrying 168 and struggling with journeymen. His distance fight with Brantley marked his third successive outing in Las Vegas in which the judges were called upon for a verdict that some would say could have gone either way.

"I just feel a little bit down," he said in his dressing room. "I let the guy hang on."

In a fight that was neither as exciting as an undercard bout between females Laura Serrano and Chevelle Hallback -- won by Serrano -- nor as dramatic as one involving heavyweights Tony Thompson and Jeremiah Johnson -- won by Thompson with one punch 32 seconds into the match -- Reid seemed to be on the verge of a knockout victory in the third and fourth rounds. He had Brantley down in the third and tried diligently to finish him off to open the fourth, yet the KO never materialized.

"I was trying to take him out," Reid admitted. "But he was hard to hit and I was missing him."

As the fight wore on Reid backed off the accelerator and left the outcome to the judges as the crowd lost its patience and occasionally booed. It wasn't the way his promotional firm, America Presents, had pictured the evening.

"I think he's come a long way down," Brantley said of Reid's decline.