By Allan Fox: In an impressive punching display, #8 WBC, #12 WBA, #12 IBF middleweight contender Tureano Johnson (18-1, 13 KOs) stopped the 24-year-old Alex Theran (17-2, 10 KOs) in the 5th round on Friday night in a Roc Nation card at Madison Square Garden in New York.
Theran suffered a leg injury in the 5th and quit after the round ended. Johnson, 30, knocked Theran down with big power shots in the 4th and the 5th rounds.
The official time of the stoppage by referee Tony Chiarantano was 3:00 of the 5th round.
Johnson was by far the best fighter on the card. He constantly pressured Theran on the inside, not letting him get any space to throw his punches. Theran was able to connect with some shots while Johnson was coming in, but he wasn’t able to land enough of them to deter him from coming forward.
At the start of the 3rd and 4th rounds, Johnson landed some tremendous hooks to the head of Theran. In the 4th, Johnson hurt Theran with a big left hook to the head. Moments later, Theran went down without getting hit. He just looked like he didn’t want to get hit again by Johnson.
For Johnson, this was his 4th straight victory since his 10th round stoppage loss to Curtis Stevens last year in April. Johnson looks better than ever now, and a potential handful for anyone in the middleweight division, including Gennady Golovkin.
With this victory, Johnson picked up the vacant WBA International middleweight and vacant WBC Silver middleweight titles.
In welterweight action, Dusty Hernandez-Harrison (25-0, 13 KOs) stayed unbeaten with a 10 round unanimous decision win over Tommy Rainone (22-6-1, 4 KOs). The final judges’ scores were 100-90, 100-90 and 99-91.
There was a lot of fouling that went on between the two of them, especially with Hernandez-Harrison in terms of hitting on the break and rabbit punches. But he later settled down and started fighting a little cleaner as the fight wore on.
Hernandez-Harrison wasn’t especially impressive. He didn’t throw many punches, and he looked to be all arms and legs.
His low work rate is going to give him problems once he starts facing better opposition. He reminds me of a weaker version of Kelly Pavlilk but without Pavlik’s size. He’s tall, slow and doesn’t have the movement or speed that you’d like to see from the better welterweights.
Welterweight Chris van Heerden (22-1-1, 11 KOs) defeated Cecil McCalla (20-1, 7 KOs) by a harder than expected 10 round split decision to win the vacant IBF International welterweight title. The final judges’ scores were 97-93, 96-94 for Van Heerden and 99-91 for McCalla. Van Heerden was easy to hit, and he lacked power in a big way.
Other boxing results on the card:
Andrew Hernandez DQ 4 Jerry Odom
Kenneth Sims Jr UD 6 Christian Steele
Eduardo Martinez UD 4 Rigoberto Miranda
Wellington Arias Romero KO 1 Lee Kreisher
Dustin Fleischer TKO 2 Frank Jordan