(Photo Credit: Ed Diller/DiBella Entertainment) By Tim Fletcher: 34-year-old welterweight Gabriel Bracero (24-2, 5 KOs) totally destroyed a fleshy looking bearded Danny O’Connor (26-3, 10 KOs) by a 1st round knockout on Saturday night on Premier Boxing Champions on NBC from the Lowell Memorial Auditorium in Lowell, Massachusetts.
Not long after the fight started, Bracero nailed the 30-year-old O’Connor with a huge right hand that flattened him. O’Connor hit the canvas and was out cold. The fight was then immediately halted. There was no way that O’Connor could get up from the knockdown because he was out cold.
Bracero and O’Connor aren’t major players in the welterweight division. They’re decent fighters, but not in the league of the top guys like Shawn Porter, Danny Garcia, Tim Bradley, Keith Thurman, Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. I wouldn’t even put them in the class of Robert Guerrero or Andre Berto.
According to Dan Rafael, Bracero could be facing former WBO light welterweight champion Chris Algieri (20-2, 8 KOs) next on December 5th on the undercard of the Peter Quillin vs. Daniel Jacobs fight card at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. It’s going to be difficult for Bracero to land that same shot with the same results against Algieri because he’s a higher class fighter than O’Connor.
“God bless Danny O’Connor. He’s a champion. Just because he lost here today, I still tip my hat off to him. It takes a real champion to come in here and do what he does. I wish him the best,” Bracero said. “My message to Danny was, after my last fight, after my last loss, I was down. I went through a depression. I told him not to let that happen to him. To pick himself back up, to be proud of himself.”
Four years ago, Bracero defeated O’Connor by an 8 round unanimous decision in April 2011. There weren’t any knockdowns in that fight.
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In a controversial stoppage, unbeaten Jonathan Guzman (20-0, 20 KOs) defeated Danny Aquino (17-3, 10 KOs) in the 9th round of a scheduled 10 round fight.
The fight was halted after the 26-year-old Guzman knocked Aquino down in the 9th with a right hand. It wasn’t a big shot and Aquino jumped up immediately and looked unhurt. The referee appeared to have made his mind up once Aquino hit the canvas. The boxing fans at ringside didn’t like the stoppage at all and they let the referee know by booing loudly.
In the 2nd round, Guzman knocked the 25-year-old Aquino down twice. The first knockdown was from a left hook. However, in the second knockdown, Guzman clearly pulled Aquino down on the canvas. The referee blew the call and scored it a knockdown despite the fact that Guzman clearly pulled him down.
“I proved that I can fight and I can punch. This fight was an example of what I can do,” Guzman said. “From the second round I fought with two hurt hands. It didn’t matter to my hands, I was going to stop him.”
Overall, Guzman looked okay, but not that great. He’s not as his record would have you believe and he’s not a huge puncher at all. Guzman leaves his guard down much of the time and he’s easy to hit. When he eventually faces someone good in the 122lb division, I suspect he’s going to get beaten.
Guzman landed a lot of elbows in the fight, and there wasn’t anything done about it by the referee, who clearly had a bad night with the way he controlled the fight. Guzman also threw a lot of backhands. His jab wasn’t very good, and he’s going to have to work on that if he wants to be able to compete against better skilled fighters like Guillermo Rigondeaux, Scott Quigg and Carl Frampton.
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Featherweight prospect Ryan Kielczewski (24-1, 7 KOs) built up an early lead and was able to hold onto defeat 37-year-old Rafael Vazquez (16-2, 13 KOs) by a 10 round unanimous decision. The final judges’ scores were 96-94, and 97-93, 97-93.
Kielczewski fought well in the first seven rounds in throwing a lot of punching and outworking Vazquez. However, Kielczewski ran out of gas in the 9th round and lost the last two rounds. Vazquez hurt Kielczewski in the 9th with a hard combination that had him backing of and trying to hold a great deal.
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