By Jeff Aranow: IBF World flyweight champion Donnie Nietes (41-1-4, 23 KOs) stopped former 2 division world champion Juan Carlos Reveco (39-4, 19 KOs) in the 7th round on Saturday night on the SuperFly2 card on HBO World Championship Boxing at The Forum in Inglewood, California.
Nietes, 35, hurt Reveco at the midway point of round 6 with a big right hand. At the end of the round, Nietes badly hurt Reveco with a big shot after the bell had sounded. Reveco staggered back to his corner. There was no chance that the 34-year-old Reveco was going to survive the next round with him as badly hurt as he was.
At the start of round 7, Reveco come out of his corner on weak legs, and he was immediately dropped with a big right hand from Nietes. After Reveco got back to his feet, referee Edward Hernandez Sr. instructed for him to come forward, but he couldn’t follow the instructions. The fight was then halted by the referee Hernandez Jr. The official time of the stoppage was at 0:53 of round 7.
It was a good win for Nietes, but not a surprising one given struggles in recent years. Reveco had lost 2 fights to Kazuto Iola in 2015, and he’s not the same fighter he was years earlier.
Nietes had too much power for Reveco tonight. The Filipino star has very good punching power in either hand, and Reveco was never able to get into the fight. He needed to box more and slug less for him to have had a chance of beating Nietes. Reveco had the wrong game plan for this fight.
Reveco was focusing on volume punching in rounds 1 through 4, but his shots were getting blocked and a lot of them were missing. Nietes was picking off Reveco’s shots and hitting him in return with really hard punches. They were heavy shots that took a lot out of Reveco. He couldn’t take those punches for long without something giving.
Nietes landed 100 of 407 shots for a 25 percent connect rate. For his part, Reveco connected on 40 of 318 shots for a connect percentage of 13. The final punch states reflects how much of a mismatch the fight was. Nietes was out-landing and out-punching Reveco from the outset.
If Nietes moves up to super flyweight, he can face talented guys like Srisaket Sor Rungvisai, Juan Francisco Estrada, Carlos Cuadras, Kal Yafai and Jerwin Ancajas. It might take Nietes to fight at 115 for him to get a competitive fight.