By Manuel Perez: Featherweight prospect Marcos Jimenez (13-1, 8 KOs) stopped Mexican fighter Baudel Cardenas (17-14-2, 6 KOs) in the 4th round of a scheduled 8-round bout at the Coliseo Antonio R. Barcelo, in Toa Baja, on Saturday night. At the end of the 4th round, Jimenez, 24, landed a huge left hook to the midsection of Cardenas, dropping him to the canvas where he lay in agony for over a minute. Referee Roberto Ramirez Jr. immediately stopped the fight at 2:59 of the 4th round after seeing Cardenas’ stricken condition.
Jimenez, from the Dominican Republic, fought very conservatively in the first round, shooting jabs out repeatedly while trying to avoid Cardenas’ sloppy attacks. Cardenas, 27, was mostly ineffective with his shots as he tended to come in a little too wild and often came up hitting nothing with his big looping hooks.
In the 2nd round, Cardenas came out much faster, throwing a lot of wide shots mostly to the head. Like in the previous round, Cardenas missed many of his punches. He looked really bad, missing almost half of his attempts at landing. For his part, Jimenez continued to fight very patient, throwing jabs and fighting almost mechanically. In the last 10 seconds of the round, however, Jimenez landed two hard left hooks that snapped Cardenas’ head back, making him a little angry as he tried to fire back. The punches were quite shocking, considering that they were thrown very hard and stood out drastically from the usual jabs that Jimenez had been throwing up until then. Clearly, Cardenas wasn’t ready for them and was somewhat shook up from the unexpected shots.
Cardenas applied a lot of pressure on Jimenez at the start of the 3rd round, and like in the previous rounds, he missed a ton of shots. Jimenez once again continued with his jabs. Cardenas was finally able to land several decent left hands, but it made no impression on Jimenez. Who continued landing jabs to the head of Cardenas.
Ion the 4th round, Cardenas landed much better than he had in the other round, hitting Jimenez with some good left hands to the body and head. Jimenez then began throwing body shots in kind, landing mostly nothing but body shots in the final minute the round. Cardenas looked uncomfortable with what he had started, though he continued to come forward none the less. With Cardenas at close range, Jimenez landed a left that strayed low, and then while Jimenez was looking somewhat stunned and hurt from the shot, Jimenez fired off another left hook to the head and one to the body. The left hook to Cardenas’ body was all that was needed, as he crumpled to the canvas, laying there in pain, with his eyes closed, while grabbing at his midsection with both hands. The referee then stepped in and put a stop to the bout.
In another fight on the same card, featherweights Jesse Padilla (1-3-2, 1 KOs) and Pedro Hernandez (4-2-1, 2 KOs) fought to a 4-round majority draw. The final scores were 38-38, 38-38 and 39-37, for Padilla. However, I had Hernandez winning the fight 39-37, as he was the one landing most of the punches during the fight, whereas Padilla mostly missed his wild shots. Padilla looked decent in the 1st round, however, landing wide looping hooks and attacking constantly.
Padilla seemed unable to thrown anything straight for some reason. Every one of his punches had a wide sweeping arc to them, which seemed to help him in the 1st round as Hernandez looked confused by the punches. However, later in the fight, Hernandez easily blocked or ducked the badly telegraphed punches, and often countered him when he missed. Just looking at Padilla’s amateurish attacks, I really wasn’t surprised that he had lost most of his fights coming into their fight.
Hernandez adjusted well in the second round, using short lefts and right hands to pick off Padilla while he would attempt his wide swings. Hernandez wasn’t putting a lot of power into his shots, but then again he didn’t need to because he was getting a lot of opportunities to land because of Padilla’s crude offense. In the last 30 seconds of the round, Padilla connected finally with several right hands, which was what some of the judges may have used to award him the round. Yet, the rest of the round, had been easily controlled by Hernandez and I couldn’t take that away for just three punches by Padilla.
The third round was all Hernandez, as he continued landing well whenever Padilla would come forward with his attacks. In many cases, Padilla would charge after Hernandez rather than coming in slowly, as if he had him in trouble. It was extremely crude looking, as if he was just running at him and hoping to mow him down with punches. Most of the time, Hernandez would set himself, getting low, and fire off compact shots and catch him coming in.
In the 4th round, Padilla made it interesting in the final minute of the round, landing some big looping shots. However, Hernandez again controlled most of the round and stayed calm in the final minute, countering many of Padilla’s power shots with punches of his own. Padilla only landed a small handful of punches, and for that reason I couldn’t see him winning the round. Hernandez was just too busy and accurate with his shots.