By Dan Ambrose: 21-year-old super bantamweight prospect Joseph Diaz (12-0, 8 KOs) stayed unbeaten in defeating an overmatched journeyman Raul Hidalgo (22-12, 16 KOs) by a 7th round TKO last Monday night at the State Farm Arena in Hidalgo, Texas.
Diaz knocked Hidalgo down several times before the fight was finally halted in the 7th round. The final knockdown came from a right hand to the body. The second knockdown was from a flurry of head shots after Diaz trapped Hidalgo in the corner and then unloaded on him with a blizzard of shots. The first knockdown was from another hard body shot.
Diaz looks pretty good, but he doesn’t appear to have the kind of talent that would make him competitive against the likes of Carl Frampton and Guillermo Rigodeaux. Likewise, Diaz doesn’t have the kind of skills that would let help him against WBO featherweight champion Vasyl Lomachenko or Gary Russell Jr. Diaz is a good basic fighter, but not someone with extraordinary skills.
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In the co-feature, light welterweight Fidel Maldonado Jr (19-2, 16 Kos) defeated Nelson Lara (15-6-5, 8 KOs) by an 8th round TKO in a tougher than expected fight. Maldonado hurt Lara with a right hand that sent him flying against the ropes. The referee then ruled it a knockdown. After the action resumed, Maldonado flurries on Lara until the referee stopped the fight at 1:30 of the round. It appeared to be a premature stoppage because Lara was fighting back and he likely would have survived the remainder of the round.
Lara got the better of Maldonado in many of the rounds, and the fight appeared to be pretty close going into the 8th. I can’t say I was impressed with what I saw of Maldonado. He’s a decent 2nd tier fighter, but he’s really far away from the better fighters in the division. He’s going to need to improve a lot if he wants to make it to the top at 140.
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In a disappointing performance from Saul “Canelo” Alvarez’s brother Ricardo “Dnamita” Alvarez (24-3, 13 KOs), he had to struggle badly to defeat 46-year-old former WBA bantamweight champion John Michael Johnson (31-10, 23 KOs) by an 8 round unanimous decision. The final judges’ scores were 79-73, 78-74 and 77-75. The 77-75 score was the more accurate one of the three, because the fight was very, very close.
The crowd booed the decision and booed Alvarez. You could see that even though Johnson was 46-years-old and fighting only his 2nd fight in the last 11 years, he was the much superior fighter. You can only imagine what Johnson would have done to Alvarez if he had fought him while he was still in his 20s or early 30s. At 46, he fought Alvarez to a standstill, and that’s troubling if you’re an Alvarez fan.
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