By Manuel Perez: Freddie Roach struck out tonight, getting a taste of defeat for one of his fighters when former World Boxing Organization super bantamweight champion Gerry Penalosa (54-7-2, 36 KOs) was destroyed by unbeaten WBO super bantamweight champion Juan Manuel Lopez (25-0, 23 KOs) in a 9th round stoppage at the Coliseo Ruben Rodriguez, in Bayamon, Puerto Rico.
The young 25-year-old Lopez beat the old champion Penalosa like an old rug, hitting him over and over again with power shots. By the time that Roach finally pulled the plug on Penalosa at the end of the 9th, Penalosa had been hit 444 times out of 1020 punches thrown by Lopez. That’s an incredible stat, because it’s rare for a fighter to throw 1000 punches in a 12 round bout, and here Lopez did it in only nine rounds.
Penalosa never stood a chance and was little more than a punching bag for Lopez for nine rounds. If Roach had been thinking clearly, he should have stopped the bout after the 3rd round when it was pretty clear that Penalosa was too old, too slow and too limited for a fighter in the class of Lopez.
In the 8th round, Lopez’s accuracy got even better as he landed an absurd 84 punches and had Penalosa’s head going from one direction to the other from the shots he was getting hit with. In the end, Roach made the smart choice and saved his fighter by stopping the fight.
It’s too bad that he wasted so much time in doing the right thing. Penalosa should probably consider retirement. That was a bad beating he needlessly took tonight, and I wouldn’t want to see him get punched around anymore like this if he were to continue fighting.
In other action on the card, light welterweight contender Lamont Peterson (27-0, 23 KOs) defeated Willy Blain (20-1, 3 KOs) by a 7th round stoppage. Like usual, Peterson attacked with heavy body shots and quickly wore Blain down.
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