By Jim Dower: Former WBA welterweight champion Luis Collazo (37-7, 20 KOs) destroyed Sammy Vasquez (21-2, 15 KOs) by a devastating 6th round knockout on Thursday night on Premier Boxing Champions on Fox Deportes at the Horseshoe Casino in Tunica, Mississippi. Collazo dropped Vasquez twice with huge right hands on the inside.
The first knockdown came in round 2. The final knockdown came in the 6th round when the 35-year-old Collazo caught Vasquez with a short right to the head that knocked him clean out. Vasquez hit the canvas and was badly hurt. The fight was immediately stopped by referee Bill Clancy. The official time of the stoppage was at 1:27 of the 6th round.
In round 2, Vasquez caught Collazo with a shot above his right eye. Vasquez then got carried with himself while attempting to take Collazo out along the ropes. This enabled Collazo to nail Vasquez with a beautiful left-right combination that put him down. Vasquez was badly hurt from the knockdown, but he was able to get back up and make it out of the round.
In hindsight, Vasquez should have learned from the knockdown in round 2 and stayed away from brawling with Collazo on the inside, because he didn’t have the boxing skills and most importantly, he didn’t have the chin to be fighting in close. If Vasquez had done his homework on Collazo, he would have seen that he’d gotten the better of his opponents his entire career on the inside.
Collazo dominated the likes of Andre Berto, Ricky Hatton and Victor Ortiz on the inside. Collazo was arguably robbed in his losses to Berto and Hatton earlier in his career. He wasn’t going to be robbed tonight, because he made sure he took the judges out of the equation by knocking out Vasquez.
The loss for the 30-year-old Vasquez is his second straight loss. Vasquez was beaten by 2008 Olympic gold medalist Felix Diaz by a 10 round unanimous decision on July 16 last year. Losing to Diaz is one thing, because he’s still young and at his best. But losing to the soon to be 36-year-old Collazo, it’s bigger blow for Vasquez. He was not supposed to lose this fight.
The fact that he did suggests that he’s not going to go anywhere in the 147lb division. Vasquez might want to consider retirement, because it’s going to be really hard for him to come back from this loss and turn his career around. Vasquez is on the wrong side of 30, and he’s not getting any younger. He did not fight smart tonight. He should have known that Collazo was luring him to the inside so that he could land his right hook. That was Collazo’s bread and butter puncher tonight, and it worked for him in a big way.
Vasquez had problems with Collazo’s accurate pot shots from round 1. Vasquez was trying too hard to land power shots instead of focusing on using his jab. Collazo was able to get in close range a number of times in round 1 to nail Vasquez with left hands and right hooks to the head.
In the 2nd round, Vasquez did a lot of holding to keep Collazo from getting his shots off. It was a close round that could have gone either way.
The complexion of the fight changed in round 3 when Collazo was able to drop Vasquez with a left-right to the head late in the round. Up until the knockdown, Vasquez was having a good round. He trapped Collazo against the ropes and started to bombard him with shots in an attempt to knock him out. That was a mistake. Vasquez left himself open for a short right hand from Collazo that badly hurt him and put him down. The punch from Collazo didn’t travel very far, but it has a lot of power on it.
After the fight, Collazo called out Shawn Porter, saying “I believe Shawn Porter is the only one. If he wants to dance, we can dance.”
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In the co-feature bout, welterweight and 2008 Olympic Cuban bronze medalist Yordenis Ugas (18-3, 8 KOs) won an unimpressive 10 round split decision victory over Levan Ghvamichava (17-3-1, 13 KOs). The final judges’ scores were 99-90, 97-94 for Ugas, and 95-94 for Ghvamichava. Ugas was deducted a point in round 8 for hitting low. Ugas got away with a massive amount of low blows throughout the fight, especially in round 5.
Ugas had a low blow clinic in the 5th, as he hit Ghvamichava at will with low blows in that round without the referee doing anything other than giving him repeated warnings. I’ve never seen a referee give as many warnings without taking points as Ugas was given. It was pretty sad to see how frequently Ghvamichava was hit with low blows before a point was finally taken off.
Ugas threw a lot of body shots in rounds one through four. Ghvamichava appeared to have good punching power, but his hand speed and work rate was too slow and inadequate for him to be competitive in the fight. Ugas was there to be beaten if Ghvamichava had been able to throw more punches and if he’d been able to come up with a little more hand speed. Ugas looked really vulnerable, as his hand speed wasn’t good, and his power not nearly enough to take out the incredibly slow Ghvamichava.
In the 5th round, Ghvamichava finally started to land with some consistency. He landed some nice right hands to the chin of Ugas in that round that snapped his head back.
Ugas came back in the 6th to get the better of Ghvamichava by throwing a lot of punches. This kept Ghvamichava from being able to let his own hands go, because each time he would look to get setup to throw, Ugas would hit him with one of his shots.
Ghvamichava was having a good round 8 when he was hit with a shot that was clearly low. The referee finally chose to take a point off from Ugas at that point. Ugas stopped throwing body punches and focused on throwing only to the head for the remainder of the fight. This actually worked against Ghvamichava, because he wasn’t able to let his hands go. When was getting hit with one right hand to the head after another. Ugas’ power was very weak, but he kept throwing a lot of shots that forced Ghvamichava to cover up and wait each time for the Cuban fighter to stop throwing before he could let his own hands go.
All in all, it wasn’t a great fight by Ugas. He won the fight, but he didn’t show the kind of talent that suggests that he can compete with the better fighters in the division like Errol Spence Jr, Keith Thurman, Danny Garcia, Amir Khan, Shawn Porter, Kell Brook, Tim Bradley or Manny Pacquiao. If Ugas had been fighting Errol Spence tonight, he likely would have taken a bad beating and been knocked out within six rounds. Spence would have had an easy time against Ugas. That’s not a knock on Ugas. It just shows you how far off he is from being at the world class level against the better fighters in the division.
Other boxing results on the card:
Eddie Ramirez TKO 9 Ryan Karl
Jose Miguel Borrego TKO 1 Tomas Mendez
Michael Seals TKO 3 Dennis Sharp
Jean Pierre Augustin TKO 1 Danny Phippen