Showtime had a bad night saved by a great fight as Carl Frampton upset Leo Santa Cruz and took away his WBA featherweight title via a majority decision in Brooklyn.The fight certainly deserves consideration for the fight of the year as the action ebbed and flowed.
Frampton threw far fewer punches than the defending champion,but threw the harder shots and won the old adage of "ring generalship" as he swept most of the early rounds on my card and created a cushion that Santa Cruz could not erase in the second half of the fight.
Neither fighter was knocked down although Santa Cruz was stunned and stumbled backwards into the ropes in the second round.
I scored Frampton a 116-113 winner,which translates to 7-4-1 in rounds.
Frampton has a few options next,which could be a unification fight vs IBF champion Lee Selby of Great Britain or a Santa Cruz rematch-either of which would have a good chance of being held in Frampton's Northern Ireland home of Belfast...
Ramon Malpica and I each picked Santa Cruz,so no points scored in the boxing challenge.
The exciting main event saved an awful evening of boxing on Showtime,which gave us a mismatch,a boring bout,Danny Garcia trying to convince people that he had no say in his opponents and Gary Russell,he of the Zabbie award win for fighting arguably the worst competition for a champion around,who then called out Vasyl Lomachenko,who schooled Russell in Russell's only bout against top ten opponents...
Combine that with the usual cliche' filled awful announcing from Mauro Ranallo and you get the point.
Just a terrible night to watch,other than the main event....
Mikey Garcia returned from his Carter administration hiatus to blast out the smaller Eloy Rojas in the fifth.
The win proved little,but considering the time off (2.5 years),I suppose Garcia deserved a gimme.
Both Ramon and I added two points for the win.
Over on HBO Latino,Golden Boy's hyped Antonio Orozco was in a life and death battle with Adam Lopez.
I thought Lopez scored the upset narrowly 96-94,but wouldn't have argued with the same score for Orozco.
Instead,boxing did what boxing does and offered a decision made before the fight started with Orozco winning a wide unanimous decision.
Ramon picked up two points for the decision win,with me adding one...
Joseph Diaz impressively took out Victor Proa in two rounds in a featherweight fight.
Diaz looks to be a comer in a suddenly talent packed 126 pound division.
Ramon and I each added one point for the Diaz win.
The boxing challenge is at 96-80....
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