By Manuel Perez: Welterweight contender Jeffrey Resto (22-2, 13 KOs) defeated Hector Alatorre (15-4, 5 KOs) by a 10-round majority decision and lightweight contender Vicente Escobedo (17-1, 11 KOs) won an easy 10-round unanimous decision over Roberto David Arrieta (27-13-4, 10 KOs) on Friday night at the Home Depot Center, in Carson, California. Resto, 31, appeared to win all 10-rounds of the fight, quite easily actually. The final judges’ scores were 99-92, 99-92 and 95-95, giving Resto the win by majority decision.
I’m not sure which fight the last judge was watching because Resto didn’t come close to losing any rounds, much less five of them, to the short 5’7” Alatorre, who despite his tenacity, was just too short in the height and reach department to land with any consistency. Most of what Alatorre did all night was clinch or throw weak shots on the inside whenever he could work his way inside. The vast majority of the time he was eating a lot jabs and right hands from Resto, which makes me wonder how one judge could get it so wrong. It was a horribly one-sided fight and even if you wanted to be kind to Alatorre, you couldn’t give him more than one round based on his sporadic workrate.
Rounds one through four were all Resto, with him jabbing Alatorre silly and tagging him with nice right hands to the head and hooks to the body. Alatorre had to walk through a lot of incoming each time he wanted to close the distance to get punching range due to his limited height. Yet once he was on the inside, the puffy-looking Alatorre could do very little other than throw a few weak shots before he would be tied up in a clinch by Resto. It wasn’t very interesting to watch because of the one-sidedness of the fight. Alatorre tried to confuse Resto by switching southpaw to orthodox back and forth in the third round, but it did little to change anything, because Alatorre continued to get pasted with hard jabs and right hands from Resto.
In rounds five though eight, Resto continued with his domination of Altorre, beating him constantly with his jab. In the sixth round, Resto began adding many more power shots, hitting the shorter Alatorre with a lot of combinations to the head. This trend continued in the 8th round, with Resto hitting Alatorre over and over again with hard shots without much let up. The sixth round was the exception, as Resto went back to his jab and controlled the round with it alone. Alatorre, for his part, was throwing almost zero punches in any of the rounds between five and eight. He looked defeated and resigned to be being beaten.
In rounds nine and ten, Resto continued battering Alatorre with combinations, still without anything being thrown back at him. There was little of interest in the last two rounds other than a headbutt in the 9th. It was a very dull fight due to Resto’s full command of the fight. Like I said, I couldn’t give Alatorre one round. He really didn’t belong in there with a guy like Resto, who was clearly out of his class in terms of talent.
In the other bout on the night, lightweight Vicente Escobedo, 26, won a lopsided 10-round unanimous decision over Roberto David Arrieta. This bout was a little more interesting because both fighters were more evenly matched in terms of skill and height. Escobedo won every round, knocking Arrieta down with a right hand in the sixth round. The scoring for this fight was much closer to reality, as Escobedo won by the scores 99-90, 99-90 and 97-92. Escobedo fought mostly a technical bout, using his jab in a surgical precision to control Arrieta, who appeared to want to turn the fight into a slugfest.
In terms of power, Arrieta appeared to be the better puncher of the two, but he didn’t have the boxing skills or the speed of Escobedo, which I suppose is why Arrieta chose to slug it out from the start. I got to give some respect to Arrieta, there was no quit in the guy. He fought at the same rate from start to finish, never slowing down with his punch rate despite the fact that he was losing every round. Most of the rounds, aside from the sixth, were very close due to Arrieta landing the harder shots than Escobedo. However, Arrieta got hit an awful lot with jabs and wasn’t able to match Escobedo in that department.
The second round had a lot of good action, as both fighters traded big shots. Arrieta pressed the action for the most part, and landed some really impressive shots. Escobedo showed an excellent chin and took them, without any signs of being hurt. By the 5th round, Arrieta began showing signs of an ugly red swelling on the right side of his face from the many jabs he was getting hit by.
In the sixth round it fairly close until Esobedo caught Arrieta with a perfect right hand, dropping him to the canvas near the end of the round. In the final four rounds of the fight, Escobedo turned it on and pulled away from Arrieta by hitting him with a high number of jabs and right hands. Arrieta tried to make a fight of it but his power seemed to have dropped off a shade. Still, he made it very enjoyable to watch.