By Manuel Perez: Light middleweight power puncher Alex Bunema (30-6-2, 16 KOs) finally round out of luck on Saturday night, when he was way out of his league in terms of boxing skills and ended up being stopped at the end of the 8th round by Spaniard Sergio Martinez (44-1-1, 24 KOs) at the Pechanga Resort & Casino, in Temecula, California. Martinez, 33, in winning the fight, captured the interim WBC light middleweight title which was on the line on Saturday night. Bunema, also 33, and perhaps the hardest overall puncher in the light middleweight division, didn’t have the speed or the work rate to catch up to the elusive Martinez, and hence was unable to land anything of note in the fight.
Bunema was knocked down in the 3rd round by a left hook from Martinez, although he wasn’t hurt in that case. However, in the 7th round, Bunema was hurt, after getting hit with a flurry of hard punches from Martinez at midpoint of the round. On the verge of being knocked out, Bunema instinctively grabbed a hold of Martinez to prevent him from hitting him anymore. However, as soon as the two fighters were separated, Martinez continued hitting Bunema with a massive amount of punches until the end of the round. Even before hurting him in the round, though, Martinez had been tagging him repeatedly with hard jabs and left hands without one shot from Bunema coming back.