Matias on stopping Ponce: “I’m like a lion looking for a feast”

By Boxing News - 02/26/2023 - Comments

By Brian Webber: Subriel Matias (19-1, 19 KOs) compared himself to a lion looking for a big feast when talking about his fifth round stoppage victory over Jeremias Ponce (30-1, 20 KOs) on Saturday night.

Matias looked like a lion, going through previously unbeaten Ponce like he was nothing and then stopping him in the fifth round to win the vacant IBF light welterweight title at The Armory in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

In the last part of the fifth, Matias unloaded on a tired & beaten 26-year-old Ponce with heavy punches to the head and body. The punch that put Ponce down was a left to the midsection that caused him to stumble forward and fall.

Ponce got up and weathered a storm of punches to get to the bell. After the round, the fight was stopped by his trainer.

There wasn’t much that Ponce could do to get back into the fight because he had been taking punishment from the third, and the writing was on the wall that he didn’t have the right game plan to deal with the nonstop punches being thrown at him by Matias.

To defeat that type of style, you’ve got to move and box and not stand and trade with him because that’s what he wants.

“First of all, the victory was for God. Secondly, I want to thank my family that is here. My mother, my daughter, my wife, everybody that came out here today,” said Subriel Matias to Showtime Boxing following his fifth round stoppage win over Jeremias Ponce on Saturday night in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

“We worked for ten months hard in the gym, so I came here to win, and there was nothing to offset that. Not really,” said Matias when asked if he was surprised that he stopped him.

“I wanted to knock him out. I wanted to knock him out in the sixth round, so I wasn’t surprised that they stopped the fight.

“I saw that he was hurt, so I’m like a lion looking for a feast, and I found it. I’m a guy for the first four rounds, I’m very tentative, but as I saw him coming out this way, I was also trying to prepare,” said Matias when asked what he was thinking when he saw Ponce come out fast in the first round, throwing 96 punches.

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