The smart thing for college-educated Brian Viloria to do in the 12th round last night would have been to sit on his commanding lead on the judges' scorecards.

The easy path for Viloria, the comeback champion, would have been to avoid punishment and not expose to further risk his hard-won International Boxing Federation light flyweight title.

Instead, a showman to the end, he did neither, electing to wade in and hammer an exclamation point on his unanimous decision victory over Jesus Iribe.

It was a victory that said more about Viloria — and his wish to bring back boxing here — than if he had served up the knockout that a crowd of about 3,000 had turned out for.

It spoke volumes, for example, about his wish to bring a much-coveted light flyweight unification bout here. It is one thing to talk about reviving boxing in Hawai'i and another to put your championship belt where your mouth is and Viloria clearly did.

When the chant of "Brian!..Brian...Brian...!" rose from the floor of the arena and reached into the rafters to start the 12th, Viloria answered by throwing both caution and the boxing manual to the wind in an effort to satisfy the biggest crowd to see him box in his home state.

"I thought I owed it to the crowd to give it a show, Rocky-like," Viloria said. "I hope everybody enjoyed that."

The crowd did, even if his own corner looked a little nervous as the leather began flying and didn't abate until the bell. "There were times when he tried to please the crowd," said Robert Garcia, Viloria's trainer. "I kept telling him to fight a smart fight. I told him it wasn't necessary, but he thought it was for the crowd."

Gary Gittelsohn, Viloria's manager said, "Had Brian gotten clipped and KO'd, everyone would have been looking at us like, 'what kind of advice did you give?' "

Small wonder, because entering the 12th round leading 108-101 on The Advertiser's card (he eventually won 118-110, 117-112, 117-111 on the judges' cards), the only way Viloria could have lost was if he'd gotten tagged.

And there was that possibility since Iribe, who had backpedaled for the first nine rounds, turned it on in desperation down the stretch. Afterward Iribe's corner claimed their fighter had suffered a broken right hand but there was little evidence of that late where, after respectfully dodging Viloria's right hand for nine rounds, he chose to furiously mix it up.

"If he had done that earlier, Brian would have knocked him out," Gittelsohn predicted.

But while we didn't get to see Viloria's knockout punch, we did get a glimpse of his heart.