De Leon defeats Caballero, Concepcion stops Salado – Boxing Results

By Jim Dower: Making his third fight since being destroyed in a 1st round blow out last year in January 2008 against Juan Manuel Lopez, featherweight Daniel Ponce De Leon (36-2, 31 KOs) defeated Roinet Caballero (27-8-1, 19 KOs) in a World Boxing Association featherweight title eliminator at the Arena Roberto Duran, in Panama City, Panama.

The final judge’s scores were 119-108, 119-108 and 117-111. De Leon, 29, has moved up a weight class to the featherweight division since being obliterated by Lopez last year and De Leon is hoping to have better luck at this weight class than he did at super bantamweight.

Ranked #3 in the WBA, De Leon clearly has his work cut out for him, because the WBA champion is Chris John, one of the best fighters in all of boxing. De Leon is more of a slugger and has struggled in the past when fighting opponents with a lot of boxing skills.

De Leon was dominated by Celestino Caballero in 2005 and lost a fairly one-sided fight to him. De Leon might be better off going after one of the other featherweight champions, such as Cristobal Cruz or Takahiro Aoh.

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Luis Concepcion 18-1, 13 KOs) defeated Omar Salado (21-2-2, 12 KOs) by a 12th round knockout to capture the vacant World Boxing Association interim flyweight title. The fight was stopped at 0:39 of the 12th round.