Alvarez destroys Lopez in 5th round: Maidana stops Soto-Karass; De Leon defeats Gonzalez

By Boxing News - 09/15/2012 - Comments

Image: Alvarez destroys Lopez in 5th round: Maidana stops Soto-Karass; De Leon defeats Gonzalez(Photos: Tom Casino/SHOWTIME) By Allan Fox: As expected, WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (41-0-1, 30 KO’s) had an easy time defeating #4 WBC Josesito Lopez (30-5, 18 KO’s) by a 5th round TKO on Saturday night on Showtime at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Alvarez knocked Lopez down in rounds 2,3 and 4. In the 5th, referee Joe Cortez stopped the fight. Lopez couldn’t handle Alvarez’s power.

This fight was just too easy for Alvarez, and it never really get interesting because Lopez, who recently moved up from welterweight, just didn’t have the size to compete with Alvarez in this fight.

In other fights on the card:

Former WBO super bantamweight champion Daniel Ponce De Leon (44-4, 35 KO’s) defeated WBC featherweight champion Jhonny Gonzalez (52-8, 45 KO’s) by a surprising eight round technical decision upset. The fight was halted after Gonzalez suffered a bad cut over his right eye in the 8th round from a clash of heads. This wasn’t the first time that the two fighters had clashed head, as Ponce De Leon received a bad cut early in the fight on the forehead from a clash of heads. De Leon knocked Gonzalez down in the 6th. The final judges’ scores were 77-74, 79-72 and 79-72.

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WBA light welterweight champion Marcos Maidana (32-4, 29 KO’s), fighting at welterweight against junior middleweight Jesus Soto-Karass (26-7-3, 17 KO’s), stopped him in the 8th round to win the vacant WBA Inter-Continental welterweight title. The fight was pretty close going into the 7th when Maidana, perhaps angry after having points deducted in the 4th and 7th rounds for hitting on the break, knocked Karrass down with a leaping right hand. Soto-Karass was badly hurt and it was was pretty clear that he probably wasn’t going to survive the next round unless he held on for dear life. Unfortunately, Maidana never gave him a chance as he tore into Soto-Karass with a flurry of shots until referee Kenny Bayless halted the fight at 0:43 of the round. Bayless seemed to be in a real penalizing mood tonight, because he took one point away from Soto-Karass for hitting on the break in the 4th and also, as I mentioned previously, he took two points away from Maidana for hitting on the break as well.

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IBF bantamweight champion Leo Santa Cruz (21-0-1, 12 KO’s) stayed unbeaten with a 5th round stoppage win over 36-year-old former WBA flyweight champion Eric Morel (46-4, 23 KO’s). Santa Cruz, 24, looking like a smaller version of Antonio Margarito, stalked the smaller Morel around the ring, battering him with hard shots. Then fight, if you want to call it that, really got out of hand in the 5th round with Santa Cruz teeing off at will on Morel. The fight was then halted after the round ended.

It’s kind of confusing why this fight was made in the first place other than #14 IBF Morel fighting for Golden Boy Promotions. Morel lost his last fight by a lopsided 12 round decision to Abner Mares and that alone should have been reason enough for Morel not to have been selected for the fight. There’s something wrong about champions fighting guys that were just BADLY beaten in their last fight the way that Morel was. It’s like signing a fighter up for a mismatch, and personally think that’s incredibly bad for the sport of boxing. Mismatches should be avoided, not sought out.

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In other fights on the card:

Sergio Thompson TKO 2 Carlos Claudio
Eddie Gomez TKO 3 Quinton Whitaker
Francisco Vargas UD 4 Victor Sanchez
Andres Gutierrez UD 6 Carlos Valcarcel



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