By Eric Thomas: In a fight plagued by fouls, light middleweight Hector Camacho Jr. (50-3-1, 27 KO’s) defeated Luis Ramon “Yory Boy” Campas (92-15-1, 74 KO’s) by a 10-round split decision at the Don Haskins Convention Center, in El Paso, Texas. Camacho Jr., the son of former boxing great Hector “Macho” Camacho, was penalized an incredible four times in the bout, losing points in the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 10th rounds for fouls ranging from low blows to holding excessively.

The holding was a real problem in the fight, as Camacho Jr. held after every punch and prevented the 38-year-old Campas from getting many chances to land his own shots. The final judges’ scores were 96-91 and 95-92 for Camacho Jr. and 95-92 for Campas. After the fight, a bloated looking Fernando Vargas entered the ring and said that he wants to fight the 31-year-old Camacho next. However, Vargas is going to have to lose a great deal of weight before he does that because he looked grossly obese and appeared to weight well over 200 pounds.

Camacho Jr. had the much better hand speed and was able to dominate the action when he was standing in the center of the ring. Camacho Jr. used a lot of movement to prevent the slower Campas from catching up to him and working him over to the body. In the 8th and 9th rounds, Camacho Jr. became more stationary and spent more time with his back against the ropes. Campas was able to come on then and finally land his shots with regularity for the first time in the fight.

However, Camacho Jr. made a mess of things by constantly clinching, something he was given repeated warnings about from referee Lawrence Cole. Finally, in the 10th round, Cole had seen enough and took a point away from Camacho Jr. for the excessive holding. An argument could be made that Camacho Jr. should have been disqualified in the fight for his constant holding because he really prevented Campas from throwing few punches through most of the fight due to the excessive clinching.

Having not seen Camacho Jr. fight in a number of years, I was shocked at how fat he’d gotten. At one point in his career, Camacho Jr. was a slender light welterweight and was incredibly fast with his hands. He’s slowed down and looks chunky as a light middleweight and not like a top contender.

If Vargas can take the weight off, I’d give him an excellent chance at beating Camacho Jr. Vargas, if he still has his power, will cause a lot of problems for Camacho if he can crowd him and get his shots off on the inside. Camacho will likely be trying to hold and spoil, but if Vargas can punch in the clinch, he will have a good chance of working Camacho Jr. over and beating him. However, it’s hard to say what kind of condition Vargas will be in. He’ll have to take off close to 100 pounds to make the light welterweight limit and I don’t know if he can do that without losing a lot of strength in the process.