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Description: John Lee Anthony Tapia (February 13, 1967 – May 27, 2012) was an American professional boxer who competed from 1988 to 2011. He was a three-division world champion, having held titles at super flyweight, bantamweight, and featherweight. His 1999 match with Paulie Ayala was named the Fight of the Year by The Ring magazine. Tapia was posthumously inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2017.
Description: Tapia and Romero had both grown up in New Mexico and offered a study in contrasts: while Tapia had originally been regarded as the state's boxing prodigy, his drug suspension allowed Romero to emerge as a clean-cut new star in his absence. The Romero family had also trained Tapia as a youth and the split between the two camps had not been a clean one. As such, the match produced extra intrigue, with thousands of New Mexicans traveling to Las Vegas for the fight. Broadcaster HBO noted that extra security measures (such as metal detectors and mandatory pat-downs for fans, now commonplace at American sporting venues but then seen as strict) were put in place at turnstiles, as it had been rumored that gangs in New Mexico had split allegiances.
