Rodela Crushes Ayala

By Boxing News - 04/05/2008 - Comments

By Manuel Perez: In perhaps the most exciting fight of the night, lightweight prospect David Rodela (9-1-2, 5 KOs) stopped previously unbeaten prospect Ramon Ayala (8-1, 3 KOs) in the 4th round of a scheduled 6-round bout at the Morongo Casino Resort & Spa, in Cabazon, California on Friday night. In the 4th round, Ayala, 19, had just landed a flurry of uppercuts to the head of Rodela, and appeared to be in control of the round, when Rodela suddenly fired a back a a three-punch combination ending with a powerful right hand that dropped Ayala to the canvas, flat on his back. He laid there for several moments before trying to get up but was counted out by referee Jose Cobian at 1:08 of the 4th round.

In the first round, Ayala quickly proved to be the faster of the two fighters as he opened up with lightning fast jabs and flurries to the head of Rodela. Despite his punches being much faster than Rodela’s, he rarely closed his fist when he threw his shots, which seemed to take a lot of the power out of his shots and making them more like slaps. In contrast, Rodela, though slower, was punching with much better form. He still didn’t land quite enough punches to win the round but he showed that he was going to be a problem for the unbeaten Ayala, who had mostly fought fighters with poor records leading up to this fight.

In the 2nd round, Rodela showed his tremendous heart as he walked through Ayala’s many flurries to land his own shots, which looked much more impressive than Ayala’s. Rodela was still getting hit an awful lot but he appeared not to care, almost like he single-mindedly wanted to get a piece of Ayala no matter what he had to endure to make it happen. The round was tough to score in that Ayala landed a high number of shots, but many of them were thrown with awful form, making him look amateurish in comparison to Rodela.

Ayala seemed to forget all about defense in the third round as he came right after Rodela, throwing non-stop flurries that kept Rodela busy. However, Ayala’s lack of defense allowed Rodela to clip him with a number of big shots in the round whenever there was a brief lull in Ayala’s punching. Again, as in the other round, Ayala out-landed Rodela in the round but it was Rodela’s bigger shots that were more telling.

In the 4th round, Ayala left off from the previous round, thinking nothing of defense as he opened up with a high number of hard uppercuts. The punches were quite impressive, thrown with much better form than his typical slapping hooks. He caught Rodela with some especially hard uppercuts. However, instead of it causing Rodela to back off and think defense, it had the reverse effect, as Rodela, now looking motivated, went right after Ayala and hit him with a left-right combination followed by a right to the head that flattened Ayala. For several moments Ayala just laid there on his back, looking as if he were out cold. However, he finally stirred and began to try and sit up. However, by the time he started to make it to his feet, referee Jose Cobian halted the fight.