By Ron Borges

NEW YORK – This is the part the public seldom sees – the sad vulnerability of the journeyman boxer revealed in its near nakedness.

Alex Bunema had come to Madison Square Garden well aware of what was expected of him. He was supposed to lose to former IBF super welterweight champion Roman Karmazin, a crackling puncher whose nickname “Made in Hell’’ seems well deserved considering the difficulties of his youth in Russia and the wars he’s gone through to win and then lose a world title in rapid succession.

Bunema is the classic opponent for such a man, a 32-year-old native of Zaire who came to boxing because, in his life, such a dangerous occupation was considered an opportunity. It led Bunema to the United States and to several potential breakthrough fights against the likes of Kassim Ouma, Bronko McKart and Jermain Taylor when they were all on their way up. In all three fights, Bunema went down, being stopped by Ouma and Taylor and losing a split decision to McKart.

After that his fate was sealed. He would fight and most of the time he would win but not on nights like Saturday at the Garden. Not on nights where he was facing a guy like Karmazan, whose lankiness, power and connections to promoter Don King were all giving him enough problems that by the end of nine rounds he trailed badly on all three judges’ cards and had in fact won only one round in the opinion of one of them, former world champion Billy Costello.

But then, out of the dark night, Bunema caught Karmazin with a left hook early in the 10th round and sent him to the floor. When the Russian got up he was like the Soviet Union. He was all but gone as a super power. Bunema sensed this instinctively but he took his time, sizing up the former champion and waiting for the right moment to unleash a three-punch combination that left Karmazin crumbled on the floor in his own corner, no life left in him.

Bunema’s joy was evident once he realized what he had done. He stood in the center of the ring hollering like a madman and beating his chest with his gloved fist. He was demanding the title shot Karmazan figured to get with WBA champion Joachim Alcine if he’d done what was expected. He wanted his due and he wanted the world, and King, to understand he knew what that should be.

“I was not surprised I did what I did,’’ Bunema (29-5-2, 15 KO) said immediately after the fight. The fight was close until I knocked him into the corner in the 10th round. I knew he was in trouble then. I thought it was over when I hit him with the big right hand but he stayed up.

“I followed him and landed the big hook that knocked him down. Now I want a title shot.’’

It was the kind of thing you hear from some fighters who have waited many years for such a moment. Bunema was making demands he knew might never come to fruition once the ring lights went down and men like King went back to their big offices so this was his one chance to state his case before he slid back into the dark shadows where fighters like him recede.

And then he was gone, back in his shared locker room space in the bowels of Madison Square Garden as the crowd moved on to the bigger fight, the one between Roy Jones, Jr. and Felix Trinidad that they’d paid good money to see. Few of had shelled out their wages to witness what Bunema had done for he was a footnote quickly forgotten.

That’s what made the scene back in his locker room all the more startling. With the area jammed with the detritus of victory – sudden hangers on, friends he never knew he had and his few loyalists – Bunema sat down on a bench. And then he wept.

He didn’t intend to, just like Don King never intended to see him knock out the fighter he favored, Karmazin. But emotion coincided with good fortune and all the weight Alex Bunema had carried these many years across the ocean from the Republic of Congo formerly known as Zaire to this moment burst like a long-crumbling dam and tears didn’t just well up in his eyes. They burst forth as he hung his head, his still wrapped fists holding the sides of his face as his body shook.

For a few moments no one knew quite what to do or say. Joy had suddenly been replaced by something else but no one outside of Bunema quite understood what it was.

He had won against all the odds, odds that began to mount against him the very day he emerged from his mother’s womb in Zaire, a country where poverty is not news. Now, at last, he had won in a sport that seldom rewards men like him and neither bravado nor elation could hold back any longer the real emotions of what such a victory meant to him.

Who knows if this will lead to a shot at Joachim Alcine? History says probably not but you never know in boxing, and if it comes who knows how Alex Bunema will fair? The smart money will bet that it will be another night like the ones he had with Taylor, Ouma and McKart, nights in which he played the role Karmazin did on Saturday.

Deep inside The Journeyman might even have realized that even as he sat, shoulders slumped in his locker room, but that reality was not the source of those tears. They were tears of relief, relief because no matter what happened from here he had come to Madison Square Garden and had his moment on the big stage and done something with it.

All his efforts had not been in vain. He made little money Saturday night and he won no world titles but, for all the rest of his years, even in his dotage, Alex Bunema can say, “You should have seen me that night in the Garden when I was young and strong and put Karmazin on his ass.’’

It’s a small victory in the wide swath of a man’s life but it was his. And he wept for wanting so long for it to come.