The biggest bout hailed from Omaha, Nebraska where hometown star Terence Crawford ripped home a tremendous uppercut in the final round to drop Jose Benavidez and followed up with the most ferocious finishing attack in the business to end the fight with a beaten Benavidez helpless and sliding along the ropes.
Benavidez fought pretty well for the first half of the fight, but Crawford steadily wore the taller and seemingly larger opponent down and was well ahead on my scorecard (8-3) entering the final round.
The problem for Jose Benavidez and what a talented fighter hasn't been able to figure out to date, is that he has excellent physical advantages for the division (tall and strong), but has never learned to use them.
In other words, Benavidez doesn't fight "tall" and use a strong jab to keep opponents on their back foot.
When Benavidez tried that against Crawford and he didn't do enough of it, he had success and whether Crawford took that away from him or he simply refused to continue using what worked, that is where the fight swung to Crawford.
As for Terence Crawford, arguably the top fighter in the world, it looks like a mandatory defense next and then who knows what waits on the Top Rank side.
Everyone wants to see Errol Spence vs Terence Crawford, but the problem is that the guy that likes to fight and wants to be more active (Crawford) doesn't have a lot of fights available, while the person that is content with one or two fights a year (Spence) has plenty of them that are easy to make.
I hate to say it, but we might look back down the road at Crawford-Spence and that might be another great fight that never happened or at least, happened too late.
On the undercard, Olympic silver medalist Shakur Stevenson knocked down late replacement Viorel Simion three times in the first round in a round one stoppage in showing the power that Stevenson had yet to flash in his start as a pro.
A great performance by Stevenson, but I thought the refereeing was inept as the second knockdown was clearly a slip and despite Simion being badly hurt after the third knockdown, the bell clanged loudly that the round was over after Simion rose, yet the referee stopped the fight rather than allow Simion the minute between rounds to try to put things together.
I'm very doubtful that would have happened, but Simion deserved the chance to try.
Bad refereeing happens so often in states like Nebraska that rarely have fight cards and I know that there would be a certain degree of hassle involved, but I'd really like to see referees (and judges for that matter) be imported that have more experience for the world-class cards that are scheduled for less than world class boxing states.
In Russia, the World Boxing Super Series limped to a slow beginning with two quarter-finals in two divisions that went the distance and excited no one.
In the cruiserweight division, American Andrew Tabiti won a unanimous decision over Ruslan Fayfer in a less than exciting fight.
The most exciting thing in this fight was Fayfer's point deduction in the last round for pushing.
I scored Tabiti a 115-112 winner and Tabiti will face the winner of this weekend's Yunier Dorticos-Mateusz Masternak matchup in the semi's.
The other fight in the bantamweight divisional tournament wasn't more exciting as lanky Zolani Tete retained his WBO title with a unanimous decision over a decorated amateur, but inexperienced professional in Mikhail Aloyan,
Outside of Tete knocking Aloyan down in the first round, the bout was eleven rounds of attempted movement by Tete and loads of grabbing, wrestling, and holding by both boxers to the point of both fighters having a point deducted.
Tete will face the winner of the upcoming WBA title fight between Ryan Burnett and Nonito Donaire in the next round.
Let's hope that both Tabiti and Tete will deliver better fights in their next fights than they did last week.
I'm not sure how many people were watching on Facebook as this fight took place at the same time as Terence Crawford was fighting on ESPN, but WBO light flyweight champ Angel Acosta took out Abraham Rodriguez with a bullet of a left hook in the second round as you'll see anywhere.
I'm not sure what Acosta has next for his future, but for his size, he punches as hard as anyone under 126 pounds.
In the boxing challenge, I outscored Ramon Malpica 8-7 on the weekend to increase my lead to 167-143 on the season.
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