By Eric Thomas: World Boxing Organization light flyweight champion Ivan Calderon (34-1-1, 6 KO’s) lost for the firs time in his career last Saturday night against WBA light flyweight champion Giovanni Segura (25-1, 21 KO’s) in an 8th round TKO at the Coliseo Mario ‘Quijote’ Morales, Guaynabo, Puerto Rico. Sugura, use a vicious body attack and a lot of pressure to put the 35-year-old Calderon down in the 8th round. However, it looked like Calderon went down after getting hit by two body shots and then stayed down despite looking like he wasn’t in any kind of pain. Normally, when a fighter gets hurt with a body shot, he bends over or rolls around in pain.

In this case, Calderon looked like he wanted to go down 15 seconds before he was even hit. His whole body language looked as if he didn’t want to fight anymore because Segura was battering him nonstop with shots to the body and mixing in an occasional head shot. Calderon did well in the first five rounds by keeping the fight in the center of the ring, but Segura was getting to Calderon with hard frequent body shots. He didn’t waste time trying to land head shots, because he obviously learned from watching Calderon’s fights that he’s not easy to hit in the head because of his movement.

Another thing that Segura did was to punish Calderon when he would attempt to clinch. Instead of allowing Calderon to clinch and get rest breaks, Segura would keep punching while Calderon was holding on to him. If Segura had a free hand, he would tag Calderon on the inside of the head and to the body. This greatly limited the amount of clinching that Calderon was willing to do because he realzed he would have to pay dearly for each clinch. In the 7th round, Segura seemed to take his offense into high gear as attacked at a quicker pace and threw even more body shots. Calderon looked really uncomfortable with the body punches and was forced to exchange with Segura.

This led to Segura landing even more body shots. Near the end of the round, Calderon initiated a couple of clinches and got punished both times with hard punches to the side of the head by Segura. In the 8th round, Calderon looked like he had already mentally quit because he immediately went to the ropes and just covered up. Segura was then able to stand directly in front of Calderon and tee off with big body shots with both hands. Before long, Calderon looked like he didn’t want anymore. Shortly after that, he took a knee and was counted out without getting up.