(Photo Credit: Ryan Hafey/Jordan Hardy/Premier Boxing Champions) By Allan Fox: 2008 Olympic gold medalist Felix Diaz (18-1, 8 KOs) handed welterweight contender Sammy Vasquez (21-1, 15 KOs) his first loss of his career on Saturday night in beating him by a narrow 10 round unanimous decision at the Legacy Arena in Birmingham, Alabama. The judges’ scored the fight 96-93, 95-94 and 95-94.
The judges initially scored the fight a draw, but after re-tabulating their scores, they gave the victory to the 32-year-old Diaz.
Vasquez lost a point in round 10 after having his mouthpiece knocked out by a punch. Vasquez had previously lost his mouthpiece twice in the fight, perhaps due to a bad gash on his lip.
Vasquez did well for the first two rounds of the fight. If the match had ended after the 2nd round, then you could have easily given him the fight. Unfortunately for Vasquez, the fight didn’t end after round two, and he started to to take a beating from the third round on. The shorter Diaz was lighting Vasquez up on the inside with his powerful combinations in round 3 through 10, and I could scarcely give Vasquez even one of those last remaining eight rounds.
I don’t know what the judges were thinking by scoring it so close, but they need to go back to judging school to learn how to judge a fight in my opinion. It was totally one-sided with Diaz dominating. However, with Vasquez the unbeaten A-side going into the contest, it’s not surprising at all to me to see the crazy scores from the judges. When you’re the A-side fighter and you’re the one that is seen as having future potential to win a world title, then I can understand the kind of scores we saw in this fight.
Vasquez was caught on the ropes repeatedly by Diaz and totally battered with huge shots. Somewhere around the fourth round, Vasquez suffered a bad gash on his right bottom lip. The cut on his lip bled constantly for the remaining rounds of the fight, and likely made it difficult for him to keep his mouthpiece in. He lost his mouthpiece a couple of times, and eventually he lost a point for it. The fact that the point deduction was the difference in the fight was kind of sad, because Diaz clearly should have won the fight even without the point deductions. How can the judges have given Vasquez rounds where he was getting totally worked over by Diaz?
Diaz constantly charged Vasquez like a mini-bull, nailing him with big power shots on the inside. Diaz reminded me of a shorter version of Shawn Porter. He was very similar to Porter, but without the mauling on the inside that we see with Porter. There wasn’t much bumping and pressing like we see in Porter’s fights. Never the less, Vasquez was totally helpless to turn back Diaz’s charges in the last eight rounds. If I were to have judged the fight, I could only give Vasquez mercy rounds where I felt sorry for him rather than for anything he was doing in the fight. Vasquez was just getting the stuffing beaten out of him for the last three-fourths of the contest. It was so one-sided that the final judges’ scores looked like scores from another fight rather than the Diaz vs. Vasquez fight.