By Jim Dower: In another huge setback for his once promising career, top rated super bantamweight contender Rey Bautista (26-2, 19 KOs) was defeated by an eight-round unanimous decision by journeyman Heriberto Ruiz (40-7-2, 23 KOs) on Saturday night on the undercard of Ricky Hatton vs. Paulie Malignaggi at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Bautista, 22, who was stopped savagely in a 1st round TKO defeat to Daniel Ponce de Leon in August 2007, found his chin betraying him once again when he was dropped in the 3rd round by a hard left-right combination from Ruiz.
Bautista would get up and continue fighting, but he struggled in the remainder of the bout, clashing heads often with Ruiz and sustaining a nasty cut on the side of his right eye that bled continuously, worsening as the fight progressed. The final judges’ scores were 80-70, 78-72 and 77-73. I personally had the fight scored much closer, with Ruiz edging the fight narrowly.
However, Bautista, ranked #1 in the World Boxing Organization (WBO), #7 in the IBF & WBA and #10 in the WBC, should have had no problems with the light-hitting Ruiz, yet he did throughout the eight round bout.
As such, at 22, Bautista may not have the chin to be a top fighter in the super bantamweight division and may need to consider moving down in weight to the bantamweight division where they don’t punch quite as hard.
Short of that, he needs a lot of work on his defense because he seems to wade in without thinking of his defense, trying to land his own big shots. That may work against some of the C-class fighters that Bautista has built his impressive record on, but against good fighters like Ruiz and de Leon, Bautista is proving to have big problems taking hard shots to the head.
Bautista looked good in the first two round, throwing hard shots and stalking Ruiz around the ring. However, the two fighters clashed heads often due to Bautista diving in with his shots. In the 2nd round, Ruiz was cut on his scalp over his right ear after a particularly hard head clash with Bautista.
All total, four were three head clashes in the round between the two fighters and each of them were hard enough for Ruiz to back up in pain. In the 3rd round, Ruiz began opening up on Bautista with hard combinations, finding it remarkably easy to hit the Filipino star with shots while he would come in with his hands down.
Near the end of the round, Ruiz landed a flurry of shots to the head of Bautista, knocking him down with a nice combination to the head. Bautista got up looking hurt and continued to get battered around the ring for the remainder of the round, clinching occasionally to try and survive.
In rounds four and five, Bautista appeared to do enough to win the rounds based on his harder punches landed. He pressured Ruiz constantly, loading up with big hooks to the head and body. His cut, however, continued to be a problem for him, as was his occasional head clashes with him.
In rounds six and seven, Ruiz came back strong, throwing a lot of punches and scoring well. His power didn’t come close to the shots that Bautista was landing, but he was throwing many more punches and scoring with flurries. In the 7th round, Bautista was doing well in the first part of the round until landing a right hand low which led to the referee taking a point away from Bautista.
This seemed to take away any momentum that Bautista had in the round, and Ruiz dominated the remainder of the round with combinations. In the 8th round Ruiz fought well, throwing a lot of punches and landing often. Bautista went all out trying desperately to score a knockout, but he didn’t have enough left at this point to cause Ruiz any trouble.