By Manuel Perez: The fight between welterweight Irving Garcia (16-3-3, 8 KOs) and Hector Munoz (18-1-1, 11 KOs) was stopped in the 2nd round after Munoz sustained a nasty cut over his left eye, which appeared to come from a right uppercut from Garcia. The fight was stopped at 1:40 of the 2nd round by Roberto Ramirez, who ruled that the cut came from a clash of heads. Garcia controlled the 1st round of the bout, landing some good left hands.
However, at the start of the 2nd round, the two fighters came in close, with Garcia’s back to the ropes, when suddenly Garcia landed a big right uppercut to the left eye of Munoz, causing him to back up and start holding the eye. The referee appeared to be shielded from the action and didn’t see that the cut was caused by a punch and assumed that it was caused by a clash of heads. After the cut was looked at, it was determined that it was too deep for the fight to be continued.
Garcia, 29, ranked # 14 in the WBC, was coming off another technical draw (this one a 10-round technical draw) against Yuriy Nuzhnenko in April for the WBA interim title. Before the cut was sustained by Nuzhnenko in the 10th, the fight was very close with Garcia coming on and looking as if he were about to take control of the fight.
In other action, lightweight Daniel Jimenez (18-3-1, 10 KOs) easily defeated Shamir Reyes (18-6-2, 7 KOs) by a 10-round unanimous decision. The final judges’ scores were 99-91, 99-91 and 98-92. Reyes, 27, fought well for the first two rounds but quickly tired out and was outclassed for the remainder of the way.
Using his left hook and a vicious body attack, Jimenez, 27, controlled the first round against the shorter 5’5″ Reyes. However, Reyes came back strong in the 2nd round, and hit Jimenez often with left hands as he was coming in. Jimenez stalked continuously in the round, but was met with precision counter-punching from Reyes throughout.
From the third round on, however, Jimenez was just too busy for the slower, more limited Reyes to handle. Reyes fought well at the at the start of the 5th round, but Jimenez took over in the second half of the round and punished the pudgy-looking Reyes with left hooks to his body for the remainder of the round. Reyes’ punch output dropped off dramatically as the rounds progressed and by the 10th and final round, he wasn’t punching at all, and was merely looking like a punching dummy for Jimenez.
The bout was a less than impressive showing for Jimenez either, for he was nailed pretty much by everything that Reyes threw at him during the fight. Lucky for him, Reyes had little power and ran out of gas as early as he did, because if he had either good stamina or power, Jimenez likely would have been looking at his third consecutive loss rather than a win.