IBF featherweight champion Luis Alberto Lopez (30-2, 17 KOs) bludgeoned his weaker, overmatched challenger Reiya Abe (25-4-1, 10 KOs), scoring an eighth-round TKO knockout on Saturday night at the Turning Stone Resort Casino in Verona, New York.
Abe was fighting with a badly swollen right eye from round two and constantly moving to avoid the powerful shots that Lopez was winning at him.
In the eighth round, Lopez waved to the crowd and then tore into Abe with an avalanche of nonstop punches that caused referee Mark Nelson to stop the fight 39 seconds into the round. Nelson had seen enough and wouldn’t wait and let Lopez continue to batter Abe, who at that point was fighting with a completely closed right eye.
What was impressive to watch tonight was how calm Lopez was with him cutting off the ring, and attacking Abe. It was as if Lopez was strolling in the park, completely carefree, unworried about anything that the challenger Abe was throwing back at him.
The body attack from Lopez seemed to do a number on Abe more than his headshots, as he had him folding from the hard punches he connected with during the fight.
Abe had his moments in rounds six and seven, catching a tiring Lopez with hard left hands, taking advantage of his low guard and confidence. Lopez didn’t care what was coming back from Abe because he didn’t have enough power to make him worry about getting hit.
After the seventh round, the ringside doctor took a close look at Abe’s swollen right eye, and one got the sense that he would stop the contest after the next round. He didn’t get the chance, though, as referee Mark Nelson pulled the plug on the fight.
It was bad luck for Abe to suffer an eye injury in his title shot, but the way that Lopez was punching tonight, he would have lost even if he hadn’t been injured. Lopez was punching too hard and was on a different level than him.