By Manuel Perez: Light welterweight prospect Javier Castro (17-1, 15 KOs) stopped Harrison Cuello (15-8-2, 11 KOs) in the 3rd round of a scheduled 8-round bout on Friday night at the Aragon Ballroom, in Chicago, Illinois. Castro, an excellent light welterweight prospect with only one loss on his record from a 1st round disqualification to Jorge Reyna in December 2005, dropped Cuello with a short left hook in the third round. At the time, Castro was having all kinds of problems with the heavy pressure that Cuello was putting on him. However, when Cuello got up and the action resumed, Castro unloaded on him with a flurry of shots while Cuello futilely attempted to cover up against the ropes. At that point, referee Genaro Rodriguez quickly moved in and halted the fight at 0:47 of the 3rd round.
Ceullo, 32, came out fast in the 1st round, rushing forward and hammering Castro with left hooks to the body. At point, Cuello landed four consecutive left hooks to the midsection of Castro, with each punch thrown rapidly one after another. Although it was clear that Castro was the better overall fighter by far, Cuello’s fast all out attack left Castro very little chance to get any punches in on his own in the opening round. Indeed, Cuello didn’t let up with his shots until near the end of the round when he relaxed enough for Castro to get in a few shots of his own.
By the way that Cuello was fighting so hard at the start of the fight, he seemed to be gambling that he would be able to score a knockout over Castro, for anything short of that, seemed to suggest that Cuello would be soon running out of gas due to his fast start and would be at great risk of being taken out himself.
Castro looked good in the 2nd round, throwing some nice hooks to the body and head of Cuello. Castro stayed relaxed and focused on landing his punches with accuracy, whereas Cuello continued with firing off his punches with machine gun-like regularity, trying to overwhelm Castro with shots. For his part, Cuello didn’t land nearly as many punches in this round as he had in the previous round, but he still landed a lot.
In the 3rd round, Cuello sprinted across the ring at the start of the round and began pelting Castro with shots, hitting him with a flurry of hard body shots. It was a strange way to start around, because Cuello seemed to be attacking Castro as if he thought he was hurt or something, and wasn’t focusing on his own defense in any way while throwing his big shots to the body. Castro merely covered up against the ropes and waited for a lull to land something of his own.
Finally, he lowered his head and without looking where he was punching, Castro threw a short left hook that landed perfectly on the jaw of Cuello, sending him backwards to the canvas where he landed on his backside. He got up slowly, looking badly hurt. After getting checked out carefully by referee Genaro Rodriguez, the fight was allowed to continue.
This time it was Castro who was the aggressor, as he went after Cuello with a blizzard of punches, hitting him over and over in a rapid fire attack with Cuello feebly trying to cover up on the ropes. After watching Cuello get hit with eleven consecutive punches without answering back with any of his own, referee Genaro Rodriguez stepped in and halted the fight at 0:47 of the 3rd round. If Cuello had shown a little more boxing ability, he probably could have lasted a lot longer than he did. However, he seemed intent on trying to score a knockout over Castro and it seemed like a doomed, if not desperate, plan from the very start.