By Eric Thomas: Continuing with his bad luck, lightweight contender Miguel Angel Huerta (26-9-1, 18 KOs) was on the losing end of a 12-round unanimous decision to veteran Javier Jauregui (53-14-2, 36 KOs) on Friday night at the Cicero Stadium, in Cicero, Illinois. Despite winning five of the last six rounds, which included knocking Jauregui down in the 10th, Huerta still lost the fight by the judges’ scores of 115-112, 117-110 and 115-112. I personally had Huerta winning seven rounds to five and having little trouble in earning the victory. Jauregui, 34, was impressive in the first half of the fight as he attacked well to the body of Huerta with left hooks.
I previously had thought that Huerta was one of the best body punches in the lightweight division, that is, until I saw Jauregui, who was clearly a level better at body punching. He looked extraordinary in the first round as he landed hard left hooks to the body of Huerta and hurt him on a number of occasions in the round. By the time the round had ended, Huerta had both arms to his sides trying to protect against the withering effects of Jauregui’s body shots.
Before the fight, I had assumed that Jauregui was past his prime and a potentially an easy fight based on his 11 prior defeats going into this fight. However, after rechecking Jauregui’s record, I noticed that he had mostly been defeated by excellent fighters, such as Julio Diaz, Ricky Quiles, Acelino Freitas, Agapito Sanchez, Jesus Chavez and Joan Guzman, to name just a few. In other words, Jauregui was the much more experienced fighter against quality opposition and with few exceptions, he’d given a good account of himself against these top fighters.
While Jauregui may be getting up there in age at 34, he was still more than a handful for the 30 year-old Huerta in the first half of the fight. In point of fact, Jauregui appeared to win four of the first six rounds of the fight due to his impressive body work against Huerta. However, after the sixth round, Jauregui begin to fade in the fight, visibly slowing down as Huerta began to outwork him by a significant margin with his own body shots. Jauregui appeared to lose the 7th round, as Huerta pressed the attack and backed him up with fierce combinations to the body.
Jauregui somehow found enough strength in his tiring body to come back and win the 8th round, largely due to his textbook left hooks to the body. He had lost much of his power by this stage in the fight, but the form that he used on his hooks to the body was so exceptional that he didn’t need much power to impress the judges or me. He looks like an instructor in a class of pupils in comparison to other fighters attempting to throw hooks to the body, and that includes Julio Cesar Chavez and his son.
By the 9th round, Jauregui was completely exhausted and no longer able to even come close to matching Huerta’s punch output. He was badly outlanded in this round, as was the case in the 10th round when he was knocked down by Huerta with a left hook. Though, in fairness to Jauregui, he appeared to be off balance when he was hit and went down because of that rather than it being a case of him being hurt. However, the knockdown still stood as a knockdown from the scoring standpoint.
Jauregui responded well after the knockdown by taking the fight to Huerta for the remainder of the round, enough perhaps to make it an even round to some. I still think that Huerta won the round outright, but he was under a lot of pressure during the final minute and a half of the round.
In the 11th and 12th rounds, Huerta was the clear winner of both rounds due to his impressive work on the inside where he outlanded Jauregui, ripping him repeatedly to the body. It was interesting to watch both fighters landing punches to the body, because both seemed to be in a dueling contest, trying to take each other out with huge body shots. In a way, it was like watching mirrored images of the same fighter, only Jauregui appeared to place his punches better to the body.
In the end, I still think Huerta had done enough to win the fight based on his work during the last five rounds, but I can see how the judges would be impressed with Jauregui’s body shots enough to award him the victory.