Fight:550412

Ennio Cometti beat Vinnie Vecchione by TKO in round 3 of 8

• Date: 1974-01-04
• Location: Milan, Lombardia, Italy

George Kimball of TheSweetScience.com claims that Vinnie Vecchione flew to Italy and fought under Poirer's name:

"In those days the star of Vecchione's gym was a Massachusetts middleweight named Paul Poirier. Poirier was unbeaten, 18-0, when Vinnie signed him for a fight in Italy. The execution of the contract more or less coincided with Poirier's religious conversion; when he joined the Seventh-Day Adventists he took a vow not to fight again. Rather than welsh on the contract, Vinnie flew to Italy and, under Poirier's name, lasted three rounds before he was stopped by a guy named Ennio Cometti. Years later Poirier decided to make a comeback, and it took him a dozen years to convince people he hadn't lost to Cometti and to get that "L" expunged from his record. [Boxrec.com now lists two Paul Poiriers. The first was 31-3, and retired for good after his 1993 loss to Larry Holmes. The other Paul Poirier (0-1) was actually Vinnie.]"