Mayweather decisions Maidana; Santa Cruz crushes Roman; Bey defeats Vazquez

By Boxing News - 09/13/2014 - Comments

_DSC7248(Photo credit: Idris Erba/Mayweather Promotions) By Jim Dower: WBA/WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr (47-0, 27 KOs) put on a boxing clinic tonight in defeating challenger Marcos Maidana (35-5, 31 KOs) on Saturday night on the “Mayhem” Card at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. The final judges’ scores were 115-112, 116-111, 116-111. Maidana It’s hard to understand what the referee was watching who scored the fight 115-112. It wasn’t that close unless the referee was counting Maidana’s many missed punches as shots that landed.

“He bit my hand and that caused my fingers to be numb. I couldn’t use my hand for a while because my finders were numb,” Mayweather said.”I felt sharper in the first fight. My fingers felt numb after the 8th round. I give my self a C minus. I got hit with some shots I shouldn’t have got hit with. I’m going to go back to my team and assess what my team decides. I don’t know who I’m fighting in May. If a fight against Manny Pacquiao presents itself then it’s possible.”

Maidana said “He may have had his hand inside my mouth but I didn’t bite him. Maybe he thinks I’m a dog, but I never bit him. Throughout the fight he was rubbing my eyes with his gloves. I think I won. I think I won the fight. If the judges want to give the fight to a guy who runs then so be it.I was the aggressor.”

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In a predictable outcome, WBC super bantamweight champion Leo Santa Cruz (28-0-1, 16 KOs) destroyed his ex-sparring partner Manuel Roman (17-3-3, 6 KOs) by a 2nd round knockout. Santa Cruz knocked Roman out with a right hand to the head in the 2nd round that sent Roman down for the count.

“I’m not scared to fight you, Rigondeaux. I’m not scared of fighting nobody,” Santa Cruz said after the fight.

Santa Cruz added that “if” his adviser Al Haymon and Golden Boy Promotions allow him to fight Guillermo Rigondeaux, then he’ll fight him. There’s no way Haymon and Golden Boy Promotions are going to allow Santa Cruz to fight Rigondeaux because he’s clearly way too good.

It’s pretty disappointing that Haymon and Golden Boy matched Santa Cruz against Roman, because this is a guy who is ranked #13 WBC in the Bantamweight division. Roman is not a super bantamweight like Santa Cruz. It looks like Haymon and Golden Boy dug up an easy mark for Santa Cruz to look better than he really is.

Unfortunately, Roman was so incredibly bad that the fans really didn’t get excited about Santa Cruz’s win. If Roman had fought well or showed something in the fight then fans would have been excited about the fight. But Roman was just running and taking punishment up until the point he was knocked out.

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In a controversial decision, #10 IBF Mickey Bey (21-1-1, 10 KOs) defeated IBF lightweight champion Miguel Vazquez (34-4, 13 KOs) by a 12 round split decision.

The final judges’ scores were 115-113 and 119-109 for Bey, and 115-113 for Vazquez. While you can make an argument that Bey deserved a close decision win, it’s difficult understand what the judge was thinking who scored the fight 119-109 for Bey. That was a ridiculous score that doesn’t make any sense at all.

The fight was nearly unwatchable due to the constant clinching by Vazquez. He was using the punch and grab technique where he would throw a shot and the immediately grab Bey to keep him from throwing a shot. It worked well in the first 6 rounds. But in the last half of the fight, Vazquez faded badly and looked weak and tired. Bey was then able to get the better of Vazquez each time he would come forward looking to hold.

Referee Tony Weeks let Vazquez get away with a massive amount of clinches and head-butts in the fight.

After the fight ended in the 12th, the crowd booed long and loud. This was before the final decision was announced. The boxing fans were just disappointed with the fight itself because it was a sleep inducing fight.

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In what could be the end of Alfredo Angulo’s career, he was beaten by little known James De La Rosa (23-2, 13 KOs) by a 10 round unanimous decision. The final judges’ scores were 98-90, 96-92 and 99-89. Angulo was dropped in the 2nd round.In the 7th, he lost a point for hitting low.

De La Rosa knocked a slow as molasses Angulo in the 2nd round after hitting him hard with two consecutive left hands to the head.

In the 6th, Angulo suffered a cut on the side of his right eye. The blood wasn’t really a factor as Angulo kept plodding forward.

Angulo started coming back in the 7th round with his heavy shots to the head and body. However, he lost a point for hitting low in the same round.

Angulo got the better of the action in rounds 8 through 10. He had De La Rosa hurt near the end of the 9th round after hitting him hard with some big head shots. In the 10th, Angulo hurt De La Rosa midway through the round and continued to batter him until the final bell.

De La Rosa ran for last half of the round. If Angulo had a little more hand speed, he would have easily stopped De La Rosa, but the speed just wasn’t there for Angulo.

If this is Angulo’s last fight of his career then you’ve got to be happy with the payday he got out of the fight. He received $500,000 for the fight. That’s big money for a guy coming off of two knockout losses in a row.

With this defeat, you’ve got to figure that Angulo’s career is now over. The fact that he couldn’t even beat an average fighter like De La Rosa is a sign that there’s really nowhere for Angulo to go.

Angulo’s trainer Virgil Hunter told him before the 10th round that if he didn’t knock De La Rosa out then his career was over. Even if Hunter didn’t mean it, you can’t see Angulo going anywhere from here. Golden Boy Promotions did Angulo a huge favor by letting him fight on this card tonight, given that he’d been knocked out in his last two fights by Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Erislandy Lara.

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In an exciting war former two division world champion Humberto Soto (65-8-2, 35 KOs) defeated the hard hitting John Molina (27-5, 22 KOs) by a 10 round unanimous decision.

Molina was docked points for low blows in the 6th and 7th rounds. Soto lost a point for a low blow in the 10th round. The final judges’ scores were 96-91, 95-92 and 95-92

It looked like Soto flopped on three of the low blows. He fell down from a low blow in the 4th. At that time referee Jay Nady gave Molina a stiff warning that he would take points away if this continued. Nady think that Soto might have been using an old veteran trick to try and win points.

In the 6th, Molina barely hit Soto below the belt line, causing Soto to hit the canvas and stay down for 2 minutes. Soto was pulling Molina’a head down at the time, making it impossible for Molina to aim his punch accurately.

In the 7th, Molina hit Soto low again, but it wasn’t a hard shot but it didn’t matter. Soto hit the canvas anyway and stayed down for another two minutes. Jay Nady then took another point away from Molina. To say that Nady was being a little too impulsive in taking points off was putting it lightly. Nady then told Molina that he’d disqualify him if he hit Soto low again.

What’s interesting about the fight is that Soto began to nail Molina with low blows in the 8th and 9th rounds without Nady calling them low. They appeared low, but Nady said they weren’t low.

Apart from the low blows, the fight was very entertaining with both guys trading huge bombs from the 1st round until the 10th. Soto threw beautiful combinations and was the busier guy. He was constantly backing Molina up with his combinations and working him over on the ropes. Molina looked like he was waiting too long in between punches rather than letting his hands go the way he needed to.

With this win, Soto could soon be facing Lucas Matthysse once again to get in position for a world title shot. Matthysse made short work of Soto in their fight in 2012, however, as he was much too strong for Soto at that time. Whether the now 34-year-old Soto can handle Matthysse’s power now is unclear. Matthysse dominated every round of the fight with Soto, and you would have to expect that he would still be able to do the same thing now two years later.

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Other boxing results on the card:

Armando Lopes UD 6 Damian Alejandro
Fabian Andres Maidana TKO 1 Jared Teer
Kevin Newman II SD 4 Azamat Umarzoda



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