Francisco Lorenzo Defeats Humberto Soto On Disqualification

By Boxing News - 06/30/2008 - Comments

lorenzo6357.jpgBy Michael Lieberman: Super featherweight Humberto Soto (44-7-2, 28 KOs) got a particularly raw deal on Saturday night when he was disqualified in the 4th round by referee Joe Cortez after landing a glancing left hand blow to the top of his opponent Francisco Lorenzo’s (33-4, 14 KOs) head, whom had just gone down without being hit. Cortez stopped the action and after what seemed like forever, he announced that Lorenzo had won the fight due to the blow being landed at the back of his head, despite the replays showing that the blow barely grazed the back of Lorenzo’s head, and couldn’t have possibly have put him in the bloody and bleeding condition that he had found himself at that point in the fight.

Lorenzo, 36, had been knocked down earlier in the round, getting chopped down with some big left uppercuts which left Lorenzo’s nose lying askew, blood dripping everywhere like a badly leaky faucet. He got up, alright, but he hardly looked interested in fighting at that point, appearing to searching for an escape hatch to bail from the fight. He had that hunted look, and I knew he wasn’t going to be sticking around for more than a few seconds before going down.

Sure enough, Soto went after him with a series of big hooks to the head, although while he was in the process of mowing Lorenzo down, Cortez suddenly inserted himself in the process by jumping in between the two fighters, acting as if he was in the process of stopping the fight; at least that’s what it seemed at the time. Instead of stopping it, he backed out fast, like he had changed his mind. Soto then came charging forward at Lorenzo, who perhaps thought it would be a good idea to go down and thus avoid what likely would have been him getting steamrollered.

Soto wasn’t stopping, and I can’t say I blame him, because he was in full motion at the time and looking to finish the fight. He attempted a right, missing badly, then landed a glancing blow, the punch that Cortez eventually ruled as the reason behind the disqualification. Never mind that Soto had been beating the day lights out of Lorenzo for the entire fight, and had turned it up a couple of notches in the 4th, and was beating him black and blue.

He looked like a wreck by the time that Soto knocked him down, and I don’t exactly blame Lorenzo for going down on his own on the second knockdown. But, Man, I was almost positive that Cortez would get this one right, not screw it up somehow. It seemed so cut and dried, you know?. Soto was pounding Lorenzo without stop, and the logical course of things was that Soto would naturally be given the knockout victory.

The World Boxing Council didn’t particularly care for the decision, I guess, for they decided later not to give Lorenzo the WBC title (the fight was for the World Boxing Council super featherweight interim title) because of the rotten ending, and will be leaving the title vacant for the time being.

Soto was plenty angry afterwards, saying “I don’t know if he [Lorenzo] wants a rematch with me, because I’m going to knock his head off.”

As for the earlier rounds of the fight, they weren’t all that competitive. Lorenzo mainly was limited to pot shots, bit looping right hands that sometimes connected, but mostly missed by a long shot. He was selective with his punches, stalking, but not throwing enough to stay up with the high offensive output of Soto. As far as I can tell, Soto was beating him pretty badly, pounding Lorenzo’s midsection at a steady pace in all of the first three rounds. You could tell that Lorenzo wasn’t going to last long even then, and I was guessing in the back of my mind that he might last one, maybe two more rounds at the most. I was right, but I didn’t figure on the discombobulated ending. Who could have though of something like that?