By Eric Thomas: In a night of early knockouts due to poor matchmaking, featherweight Yuriorkis Gamboa (14-0, 12 KOs) destroyed destroyed Walter Estrada (35-9, 24 KOs) seconds into the fight, hitting him with a flurry of power shots ending with a big right hand to send him down for the count. It was no surprise, because Estrada had a poor record going into the fight and had been knocked out early in two of his last seven fights. In the end, he was simply too slow for Gamboa and looked as if he was fighting in slow motion next to the speedy Gamboa.
Undefeated light middleweight Erislandy Lara (4-0, 3 KOs), also a former Cuban amateur star like Gamboa, obliterated Keith Gross (3-1, 1 KO) in the 1st round, knocking him down twice in the fight with hard left-right combinations. Lara showed good power and pin point accuracy with his power shots, raking Gross with hooks and uppercuts until he was taken out onl;y 69 seconds into the fight. This, too, was a terrible mismatch and not particularly interesting to watch.
In the best fight of the night, lightweight knockout artist Breidis Prescott (21-0, 18 KO’s) defeated Humberto Toledo (34-6-2) by a 10th round disqualification after Toledo bit Prescott on the left shoulder in the 10th round. The fight was stopped at 1:58 of the 10th. Prescott dropped Toledo in the 7th with a big hook to the head. Despite not knocking him out, Prescott nailed Toledo constantly with tremendous shots from start to finish, showing vast punch arsenal in the process. It’s credit to Toledo for taking all the punishment.