By Dan Ambrose: Heavyweight Chris Arreola (31-2, 27 KO’s) scored a quick 3rd round knockout last Saturday night in stopping a game but clearly over-matched Nagy Aguilera (16-6, 11 KO’s) on the undercard of the Super Six match-up between Andre Ward and Arthur Abraham at the Home Depot Center in Carson, California. Arreola, 234 lbs, came into the fight weighing 15 pounds less than he did in his last fight in last fight against Joey Abell in January.

The lighter weight clearly gave Arreola more quickness and ability to throw a lot of punches. However, he didn’t appear as strong as he was when he was carrying around more weight and it took a lot of shots to take out a fighter that the old overweight Arreola likely would have stopped in the first couple of rounds. Aguilera looked like he wanted no part of Arreola in the opening round of the fight, as he circled constantly and seemed to be looking to not get hit.

Arreola stalked around the ring landing flurries whenever Aguilera would stop with his back to the ropes. In the 2nd round, Arreola quickly pinned Aguilera against the ropes and unloaded with a flurry of hard shots to the head. However, Arreola punched himself out and Aguilera took over and landed some nice shots, showing respectable power himself. Towards the end of the rounds, Arreola was able to come back with some good shots of his own after he got his wind back.

In the 3rd round, Arreola went right after Aguilera and hammered him while he was against the ropes and hurt him with a big left hook to the head. Aguilera then took an enormous amount of shots from Arreola while backed against the ropes until the referee Raul Caiz Jr. stepped in and stopped the fight after one particularly big hand shot from Arreola snapped Aguilera’s head back violently. The official stoppage came at 1:58 of the 3rd.

Although it was a good win for Arreola, he needs to get his weight right because he didn’t look as powerful as he normally is. Perhaps he doesn’t need to be if he can keep that kind of pressure on his opponents. If he had been able to fight Tomasz Adamek with this kind of pressure and workrate, he’d have likely won the fight. However, we really don’t whether Arreola could have kept up the same kind of pace against Aguilera for 10 rounds. I have my doubts. But if Arreola can fight like that for 10 to 12 rounds, he’ll be a problem for anyone in the division except for the Klitschkos.