By Jim Dower: 34-year-old welterweight Roberto Garcia (35-3, 23 KO’s) had his way with Victor Cayo (32-3, 23 KO’s) in beating him up and stopping him in the 6th round on Thursday night at the Hialeah Park Race Track, in Hialeah, Florida, USA. Garcia hurt Cayo in the 6th round with a big left hook to the head after trapping him against the ropes.
Garcia then hit Cayo with a right to the head that caused him to stumble sideways along the ropes. Referee Telis Assimenios then stepped in and halted the fight at 2:38 of the round. To his credit, Garcia could have hit Cayo with a finishing shot while he was defenseless, but he held back and let the referee step in and waive off the fight. Cayo was cut badly over the right eye from a head-butt in the 4th round.
Garcia, who has spent most of his career at junior middleweight, simply had too much size and power for Cayo. Garcia looked like a junior middleweight last night, and Cayo looked more like a small welterweight. It was a mismatch right from the start, as Garcia calmly walked Cayo down each round, nailing him with hooks to the body and heat almost at will. Cayo did a lot of moving to try and avoid Garcia’s attacks, but Garcia did an excellent job of cutting off the ring to force Cayo to fight. Cayo had his moments in each round with him landing nice shots, and jabbing well. However, Garcia was able to walk through the shots without any problem, and pound Cayo with punches. Garcia’s size advantage made it easy for him to take Cayo’s punches, because he was basically a junior middleweight fighting a light welterweight last night.
For Garcia, this was his 7th consecutive victory since his one-sided 10 round unanimous decision loss to Antonio Margarito in May of 2010. This wasn’t a prime version of Margarito that was able to easily out-box Garcia, so it kind of gives you an indication of what Garcia’s level is.
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A heavy looking middleweight Jonathan “Mantequilla” Gonzalez (18-0-1, 14 KO’s) had to struggle hard to defeat Rogelio Medina (32-6, 26 KO’s) by a 10 round split decision. The judges scores were 97-93 and 96-94 for Gonzalez, and 96-94 for Medina. The closeness of the win for Gonzalez showed pretty clearly that he’s fighting in the wrong division. He needs to lose some fat around his midsection and move down a division to light middleweight if he wants to have any success. Most of the rounds were very close with both guys showing little in the way of defense, and getting hit a lot.
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