By Jim Dower: Undefeated lightweight Breidis Prescott (21-0, 18 KOs) defeated Humberto Toledo (34-6-2, 20 KOs) in a 10th round disqualification on Friday night at the University Center Arena, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Prescott, 25, was way ahead in the fight in the 10th having won every round when Toledo, perhaps upset that Prescott was clinching him a lot in the final round, bite Prescott on his left shoulder.
The bite caused Prescott to back up in pain and immediately show referee Telis Assimenios the bite. Initially, Assimenios docked two points from Toledo. However, he immediately changed his mind and disqualified him at 1:58 of the 10th after seeing the seriousness of the foul.
Toledo had fouled Prescott quite often in the bout, often holding and hitting him in the head. Toledo was penalized one point for holding and hitting in the 8th after receiving repeated warnings from the referee. Toledo also frequently charged in on Prescott with his head down and would bang heads with Prescott, almost as if it was planned.
Prescott looked frustrated through much of the fight about the head butts, and would look towards the referee for help. This actually seemed to be Toledo’s best weapon because he was missing bad with his shots and was throwing largely wild shots as he would charge forward. It boiled down to Prescott’s punches vs. Toledo’s head. Prescott looked more like matador than a boxer on defense, because it wasn’t the punches that he had to worry about, it was Toledo’s head.
In hindsight, I have no idea why Prescott ever signed on to fight this guy because if Toledo fights like this all the time, then it must be really hard on his opponents having to deal with the potential of being cut from his wild charges. Before this bout, Toledo had been stopped in the early rounds by both Humberto Soto and Lamont Peterson in the past three years.
However, in their case, they used a strong body attack to take Toledo out early. Prescott focused mainly on throwing head shots and didn’t go to the body much during the fight on Friday night. He also didn’t fight in close and stayed on the outside where he threw one punch at a time at Toledo.
Prescott’s shots were incredibly hard and the impact of the blows were very loud. For those writers who said that Prescott wasn’t throwing hard because he was unable to knock Toledo out, they’re dead wrong. Believe me, Prescott was throwing massive head shots from the 1st round until the 10th, each one of them hard enough to knock most fighters out.
It’s a credit to Toledo that he could take the shots. He took them but he wasn’t in the fight, because he was merely taking shots and not landing anything back but his head. If it was Amir Khan that Prescott was facing instead of Toledo on Friday night, I couldn’t see Khan making it out of the 1st.
Prescott’s jabs were incredibly hard almost like power punch when they landed. Now In know why he was able to stagger Khan with one of them. Prescott can flat out throw his jabs like a right hand. He showed also showed the ability to punch with incredible forward with his left hooks while retreating backwards.
In comparing him with Nate Campbell who fought recently, I’d have to say that Prescott threw much harder with every shot, even his jabs , than what Campbell was throwing. The difference here is that Prescott is able to throw many more punches than Campbell each round.
Prescott came out throwing huge shots in the 1st round, each of them landing with a loud thudding sound each time they would hit Toledo. Prescott landed a lot of shots in the round many of them left hooks to the head. Toledo came charging forward and banged heads with Prescott, setting a course for how the entire fight would be played out. Prescott was cut over left eye from one of the head butts in the round.
Just watching Toledo rush forward with his head down, I knew that Prescott was going to get cut sooner or later. I didn’t figure it would happen so soon though. Prescott continued pasting Toledo with heavy shots in rounds two and three. Toledo was warned for hitting and holding in the 2nd for grabbing Prescott’s head with his left hand and pulling it forward so that he could land uppercuts.
Prescott showed some excellent foot movement in the 3rd, moving from side to side to prevent Toledo from bull rushing him with his head down. In the meantime, Prescott was able to land a ton of left hooks and jabs against the smaller Toledo.
In round four through six, Toledo stuck to his rushing forward with his head down pattern of fighting, looking to connect. He reminded me a lot of Freudis Rojas, the fighter that recently head butted Marco Antonio Barrera in the 3rd round of their bout on January 31st, opening a bad cut over the left eye of Barrera and causing Rojas to be disqualified. Toledo was rushing forward with his head down in the same way that Rojas was, showing perfect form for someone that was looking to turn things rough.
By the 6th, Prescott was getting frustrated by the constant head butts, looking at the referee for help, but not getting any. Toledo did little in any of these rounds as far as landing punches go. It was Prescott hat was doing all the landing, throwing hard hooks and right hands.
Late in the 7th, Prescott landed a hard left hook that staggered Toledo who fell into the ropes and had to hold on to prevent from falling down. The referee ruled it a knockdown and gave Toledo a standing eight count. The round ended shortly after that.
In the 8th, Toledo had a point deducted for hitting and holding. Like the previous seven rounds, Prescott easily won the round with his huge power shots. But, for a power puncher, Prescott showed excellent ring movement, backing away from Toledo’s wild shots and hitting him.
Toledo began looking really desperate in the 9th, charging forward even more with his head down and missing the punches that he was wildly trying to land. Toledo was landing one out of every 15 punches as far as I could tell. Just a terrible and looked like the clumsiest fighter I’ve seen. Towards the end of the round, Toledo was taking his head down rushes to another level, showing desperation I’ve rarely seen. His head was landing well, much better than his terrible aim with his punches.
In the 10th, Toledo was now doing all the fighting with his head down, charging after Prescott continuously and ramming into him like a little bull. To combat this, Prescott began clinching him as much as possible. Frustrated at being clinched, Toledo began hitting in the clinches.
It seemed off that Toledo wanted to fight so badly, because he had no chance of knocking Prescott out, at least not with a punch. Toledo had fought the entire fight as if were a blind man with no athletic ability, which is why I couldn’t understand how he seemed to think that he could knock him out in the last round. It seemed foolish and a complete waste of time on his part.
Finally, after being pushed up against the ropes and clinched by Prescott, Toledo angrily bit him on the shoulder as Prescott was pulling away. Immediately, Prescott showed his reddened shoulder to the referee, who made a snap judgment to take away two points from Toledo. However, the referee then reversed course and disqualified Toledo for the bite.
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