By Jim Dower: Unbeaten welterweight contender Mike Jones (22-0, 18 KO’s) overpowered Puerto Rican Irving Garcia (17-5-3, 8 KO’s), stopping him in the 5th round on Friday night at the Boardwalk Hall, in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Jones, 27, wants to fight World Boxing Council welterweight champion Andre Berto next, according to Fightnews.com.

Berto, however, probably doesn’t want to fight the hard-hitting Jones, even though it would be a good fight for Berto to take because it would further enhance his championship credentials if he could beat a big slugger like Jones. Ranked #2 WBO< #3 WBA, #7 IBF and #7 WBC, Jones probably isn’t ranked high enough to get a fight with Berto right now. It may require that Jones become Berto’s mandatory challenger in order for him to fight him, because without a big name, Jones doesn’t have much interest Berto right now. Jones isn’t popular enough and hasn’t had enough of his fights shown on cable for him to have much of a following in the U.S. Jones doesn’t have the hand speed or the same boxing ability that Berto has. All Berto would have to do is use a little bit of movement, and make sure he doesn’t stand in front of the slow moving Jones to get a win. Against Garcia, Jones didn’t look all that impressive in the first two rounds of the fight when Garcia was using his hard jab to catch the slower Jones as he was coming in. What became clear is that Jones doesn’t have much of a jab. He was capable of throwing a hard jab occasionally but most of the time he would short arm it and miss. Jones also seemed unable to land his heavy shots when Garcia was the outside. Because of all the muscle that Jones is carrying on his upper body, it’s caused him to be tight, and not flexible enough to land his shots from the outside. Jones did best when Garcia would stand directly in front of him and would let Jones to creep up close enough to throw his big left hooks and right hands Jones got close enough in the 4th round to hurt Garcia with a hard uppercut. Garcia looked to be tiring in the 4th, and threw few punches. Getting hurt certainly didn’t help Garcia any either. But he needed to keep his jab going and to keep Jones on the outside. He did neither. In the 5th round, Jones walked straight up on Garcia and got right in front of him and began to pummel him with multiple left hooks to the head. Jones looked really muscle bound and it’s surprising that Garcia just stood there in front of him, making it easy for Jones to land. A short time later, Jones caught Garcia up against the ropes and quickly hurt him with some big left hooks and right hands. Jones put Garcia down with a left south of the border. The referee Randy Neumann missed the low blow and counted it as a knockdown, even though Garcia kept gesturing that it was a low blow. When Garcia failed to get back on his feet, the fight was stopped by Neumann.