Over the next couple of weeks, BoxingScene writers are listing their favorite fights. Some are fights they attended, some are not. Some are included because they were epic contests, others because they involve a favorite fighter, a favorite moment or hold some kind of special significance.
Typically, the best response to a great fight is doing it again. Sometimes it can’t be done again. Sometimes that’s for the best.
When people say, “I was there,” it’s usually for a championship fight that exceeds expectations, like the way everyone claims they were in the house for the first Diego Corrales vs. Jose Luis Castillo fight, or when they saw a great band like My Chemical Romance play at a random bar down the shore before “Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge” blew up. For veterans of the New Jersey boxing scene of a certain age, the four-round battle between Chris Murphy and Abe Torres on August 27, 2009, at Schuetzen Park in North Bergen, New Jersey, is one of those fights that people fondly recall having attended.
When BoxingScene reporters were asked to write about their favorite fights, it didn’t take me more than five seconds to volunteer a recollection of this one. It might be expected that I would pick a higher profile fight, like the 2012 Fight of the Year between Juan Manuel Marquez and Manny Pacquiao, which I was ringside for, or one of the more noteworthy bouts from one of the shows I attended in the Philippines, Australia or the United Kingdom.
Instead, the fight that stands out for me is this four-round junior middleweight fight at a club show venue just minutes from New York City. The fight ended in a draw, with two judges scoring it even and one having it 39-37 for Torres. But for those who got to see this 12-minute street fight, it hardly mattered if any decision was rendered.
Murphy, who entered with a 3-0 (3 KOs) record, and Torres, 1-3-1 (1 KO), traveled very different paths to this junction.
Murphy was a popular ticket seller out of Sparta, a suburban town in Morris County, New Jersey. The Irish-American brawler, who started at the Dover Boxing Club, had kept an active schedule as an amateur boxer with almost 40 bouts, but had the misfortune of constantly running into Denis Douglin, the New Jersey 152lbs amateur star who won the National Golden Gloves in 2008, the last year Murphy was an amateur. Murphy’s father was a boxer that taught him how to use his hands at a young age, and he got plenty of practice in his other sport, hockey. Murphy played junior hockey in Toronto and then played college hockey for the NCAA Division I school Merrimack College in Massachusetts. Afterwards, he signed a pro contract to play in the Southern Professional Hockey League, where he led the league in an appropriate statistical category.
“I led all professional rookies in hockey fights with 26,” said Murphy, now 40, who trained at Passaic PAL under Mike Skowronski as a pro. “I like to fight. I like being in that kind of competition, and I didn't mind getting hit. That was obvious from my fight with Abe. I was a little bit of a wild guy.”
Torres, who was 34 at the time, was a product of the Union City Boxing Club, a rough gym in a primarily Hispanic part of Hudson County that became a powerhouse of New Jersey amateur boxing in the early to mid 90s. Born in The Bronx of Puerto Rican and Dominican descent, Torres had one brush with championship gold in the 1993 New Jersey Golden Gloves, making it to the 139lbs novice final. Already finding trouble in the streets at age 17, trainer Joe Botti, a Union City police officer, brought Torres into his home to keep him focused for the tournament. The heavy-handed, iron-chinned Torres punched his way through the early fights but was left reeling following a controversial 3-2 split decision loss in the final to the popular Johnny Molnar. Afterwards, Torres drifted in and out of the gym, rarely staying focused long enough to get through a fight camp.
“I was more a street fighter trying to box, really,” admits Torres, now 50.
“Joe would tell me, ‘You have the talent to do this and that,’ but me being a knucklehead, being outside in the early 90s, trying to get money, this and that, I made fucked-up decisions. I could never really focus on boxing 100 percent because I had other family-related issues. So that kind of messed me up in the head also.
“[After losing in the Golden Gloves finals] I started hanging out with the wrong people, trying to make money. I was like, ‘Joe, thank you, but I’m out.’”
Botti, who first started coaching Torres when he was 16, always had a soft spot for Torres, who was one of the first boxers he trained when he started the club. Whenever Torres drifted out, Botti was always there to welcome him back.
“He had a couple things working against him,” Botti said. “One was, he had a tough upbringing; and two, his father wasn’t around because he got killed when he was young.”
Torres turned pro in 1996, losing a decision at Schuetzen Park in a fight he admits he barely trained for, and then wouldn’t fight again for 10 years, going 1-2-1 in four fights in four months, before sitting out another three years until he got the call from Murphy’s promoter, Pound for Pound Promotions, which was run by John Lynch, the brother of Arturo Gatti’s manager, Pat Lynch, who co-managed Murphy alongside Murphy’s father. Murphy, then 24 years old, had no such hard luck in his early career, scoring three straight knockouts to begin his career, as his two-fisted power overwhelmed Kenneth Meeks, James Walker and La Take Williams in his three outings after turning pro in February 2009.
Generally with club-show-level boxing, there is an A-side who sells the tickets and brings the crowd, and the B-side, who is often the overmatched opponent without a friend in the room. On this particular night, the matchup was an all-A-side fight. Schuetzen Park was located just a five-minute drive from the Union City Police Department, where the Union City Boxing Club was located, and another popular attraction from the gym, Jason “El Monstruo” Escalera, had sold a significant number of tickets to attendees who, by proxy, were Torres fans. Murphy’s fanbase, as usual, was well represented throughout the venue.
The show had experienced several issues heading into fight night. The main event was to feature Mike Arnaoutis against Troy Browning, but Browning withdrew because of an illness, and Illido Julio, the late replacement, was rejected because he came in about 10lbs lighter than Arnaoutis. Instead, Bayonne-based light heavyweight Bobby Rooney Jnr moved into the main-event slot. The show was also the first the company had done since the death of Arturo Gatti, and ring announcer Henry Hascup did his trademark nine-count tribute to the fallen Jersey star.
From the opening bell, it was clear that neither was interested in boxing their way to a decision. Murphy and Torres had the same idea as they stood at center ring winging power shots, with Murphy scoring better with his left hook and Torres doing more damage with his right hand. The free swinging exchanges tested the other’s mettle as any punch could have scored a knockdown.
“The place was packed and it was rocking,” recalls Murphy. “There was no feeling-out process. We went out there and started putting leather on each other. I remember one of the first shots I hit Abe with, it cut him under one of his eyes, it drew some blood. The kid was tough as nails, though.”
“Neither of us wanted to lose,” said Torres, who was hesitant to throw left hooks because of a sore wrist. “So it was like two wills right there. He had his will, and I had mine. He took my best punches, he was right there, and I took his best shots.”
As the fight wore on, both fighters began to show the effects of taking the other boxer’s flush punches. Murphy says that, while he didn’t expect a one-punch knockout, he thought Torres would eventually wear down.
“I had been knocking guys out and I just thought he was going to drop,” said Murphy. “I just knew after that first round, I was like, ‘This kid's got a chin.’”
Though there was a sea of black-and-red Union City Boxing Club shirts and chants of “Let’s go Abe!” Torres says it was the presence of his son, then 14, and daughter, 7, at ringside that motivated him to fight harder. “As a father, you don't want to look bad to your kids. You don't want to get knocked out in front of your kids.”
The two brawled until the final bell, with the momentum switching with each exchange. It was as if both men had psychically made an agreement to not defend the other’s punches, with the lone pretense at boxing being pawing jabs to get close before trading haymakers again.
“All I remember was, from the beginning of the first round to the last round, they stood toe-to-toe. It was just bombing away; there was no boxing, there was no jabs. It was just tit for tat, giving and taking,” said Botti, who has since retired from the police department and now runs the boxing program at Strategic MMA Academy in Old Bridge, New Jersey.
When the verdict was announced as a draw, the crowd initially booed, with both fanbases wanting their boxer to have his hand raised. But when ring announcer Henry Hascup invited the fans to give a round of applause, every fan in attendance rose to their feet in appreciation of what each man had given of themselves.
“You generally don't see a three-minute standing ovation for a four-rounder, right?” Murphy said. “It was great.
“People still talk to me about that fight. He came to fight, and we gave the crowd an amazing fight. I haven't gone back and watched the fight in a long time. I think that anything other than a draw in that fight might have been an injustice to either of us.”
Said Torres: “At least they didn’t rob me, so I was OK with [the draw]. It would have been worse to get an ‘L.’”
Torres recalls that they exchanged their mutual respect in the dressing room. “He’s a good guy. I remember after the fight, we were talking and he told me, ‘You thought I was just a regular white boy.’”
In the immediate aftermath, both fighters were open to a rematch, with Murphy telling BoxingNews24 that he felt the second fight should be his first six-round bout. A crowd-pleasing fight in which both boxers could draw fans would have been a natural sell in Hudson County, but it was not to be. Neither man ever fought again – though it wasn’t directly related to circumstances from the fight.
Prior to turning pro, Murphy had already undergone two surgeries on a severely torn cornea. After the Torres fight, Murphy took some time to recover and went back to training, and had been picked to be the main sparring partner for Alfredo Angulo, the unbeaten Mexican star who was preparing for his WBO interim junior middleweight title fight against Harry Joe Yorgey in November 2009. Murphy had made it through more than 100 rounds of sparring with Angulo over the course of six weeks, when another amateur asked if he could move with Murphy as well.
“Some amateur kid happens to connect with some weird shot where the glove gets through my head gear and scratches my cornea again. I knew immediately I was done,” recalled Murphy. “I went to the doctor, and they said, ‘Listen, you got four fights under your belt. If you were 30-0 right now, I would tell you, ‘Yeah, take a couple more fights, but you're just going to keep damaging this eye.’
“And that was it. That was the end of my career.”
But life wasn’t too bad after boxing. Murphy, who now lives in Scotch Plains, New Jersey, eventually attended Rutgers Law School and became a founding partner at Murphy, Schiller and Wilkes, a law firm based in Newark that specializes in the commercial real estate and construction industries. He was named to the ROI-NJ Influencers Power List for 2025 in recognition of his achievements in the legal world.
“I say all the time, the eye injury was probably the best thing that ever happened to me, because I did not mind getting hit,” said Murphy. “It might have been great for me as I built my career, but taking too many shots like that probably wouldn't have been good for me. Instead I went out and built my law firm and had a decent career there. So I’m very fortunate that I didn’t have that six-rounder with Abe.”
The following year, Torres was ready to get back in the ring again when he received an offer to fight Osnel Charles on the undercard of Tomasz Adamek vs. Michael Grant in August 2010 at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey. As Torres was undergoing his medicals, the healthcare facility that was doing his bloodwork gave Torres the scare of a lifetime: a false positive on his HIV test. For a week, Torres was distraught, trying to make peace with what would be a life-changing diagnosis, making boxing the furthest thought from his mind.
“You don't even know how fucked up I felt,” Torres said. “And then, like, a week later, they told me there was a mistake. I got tested a couple of times after that, and I came out negative, thank God.
“I tried to stay positive, because I got my kids. So I was like, ‘Fuck it, if Magic [Johnson] did it, I’ll do it, too.’ I tried to be positive like that.
“After that, I just kept working. I focused more on my kids. I was like, that's it, because I was already almost 37. I had to face reality that I'm almost 40.”
Now Torres lives in Secaucus, New Jersey, and has been a truck driver since 2006. Although he laments that his record doesn’t truly reflect his potential, he finds peace knowing that his children got to see their father’s toughness up close.
“It felt good,” said Torres, whose son, Kenneth, also made it to the NJ Golden Gloves finals in 2017. “If you’re a parent, you know what I’m talking about. If you’re not, it’s like little you looking up at their hero."
Although neither Murphy nor Torres ever fought again, Schuetzen Park would continue as the premier club-show venue in North Jersey for another five years. Unfortunately for the local scene, at the same time the building was putting on great fights in the ring, it was gaining a reputation for having just as many good fights outside of it. In 2014, a fight between Juan Rodriguez Jnr – another Union City Boxing alum – and Philadelphia’s Greg Jackson ended in a four-round technical decision after a brawl broke out at ringside and someone was stabbed in the crowd. The fights had to be stopped because the only ambulance at the show sped off with the injured fan inside. Schuetzen Park, which hosted its first pro show there in 1973, hasn’t hosted boxing since then, and now it serves a venue for weddings and parties.
The Chris Murphy-Abe Torres fight has become lost media to the general public, though one round of footage still remains on YouTube. But for those in attendance that night, the four-round brawl remains an example of everything that is great about the sport.
“I think the crowd was very appreciative of the fact that there were two guys in there in a four-round fight that were relatively evenly matched and just wanted to give people what they paid to come see,” said Murphy.
“They paid for a good fight, and we gave it to them.”
Ryan Songalia is a reporter and editor for BoxingScene.com and has written for ESPN, the New York Daily News, Rappler, The Guardian, Vice and The Ring magazine. He holds a Master’s degree in Journalism from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and is a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be reached at ryansongalia@gmail.com or on Twitter at @ryansongalia.