Boxing Challenge: Plania upsets Greer!

The Top Rank series produced two good fights from their feature matches with a surprising upset in the main event and another surprise from the co-main with most believing that the wrong fighter had his hand raised.

In the main event from Las Vegas, Mike Plania knocked down Joshua Greer in the first and sixth rounds and dominated most of the bout on his way to an upset majority decision victory.
Greer entered the fight as the WBO's top-ranked contender at bantamweight and would have likely gotten a title shot against the winner of the unification match between Naoya Inoue and John Riel Casimero after their bout is concluded, but you could see that going out the window in round one when Plania connected with a left hook from the sky that dropped Greer to the floor.
Greer didn't seem seriously hurt, but the respect for Plania's pop was immediate and it changed Greer's appetite for engaging the more powerful puncher.
Plania would land the same screaming left hook near the end of the sixth round to score another knockdown and put the fight in the winning column, although Greer did attempt to outwork Plania in the fading rounds and won a few rounds before losing 97-91 on my card (7-3 and two knockdowns).
The scores for Plania were 97-91 and 96-92, which might have been a hair generous ( as mine might have been)  to Greer, but Dave Moretti, who usually is a solid judge, somehow came up with a 94-94 card.
In other words, in a fight that Plania dominated, it was only the two knockdowns that salvaged a draw on Moretti's scorecard.
A really bad scorecard there and the only mild mar on the upset win for Plania, who might be a coming standout in the division although I'm not sure that he will move from an unranked fighter to take Greer's place at number one in the WBO rankings.
Steve Kim stated that he hadn't seen a chopping left hook like Plania's before and upon thinking about that, I think he may be right.
Chopping punches for whatever reason have usually been right hands (like Tim Witherspoon used to throw) and thrown almost overhand.
Plania's hook has an unusual delivery, but it's not overhand and it's hard to describe in words, but Kim is correct- it's certainly unique.

In the co-main event, undefeated welterweight Giovani Santillan rallied in the late rounds to win a very unpopular majority decision over former WBC lightweight champion Antonio DeMarco in a matchup of two lefthanders.
DeMarco threw more and landed slightly more, but Santillan did some good work in the late rounds as he won the close decision (96-94 x 2 and 95-95), with my scoring agreeing with the 95-95 scorecard.
It seems that almost everyone thought DeMarco won clearly and it did seem that I gave the closer rounds to Santillan, so the fight might be worth a second watch to score again.
A rematch could be for the still-undefeated Santillan considering the controversial scoring.

Ramon Malpica and I each earned one point for the win by Santillan in the boxing challenge to move the totals to 51-44.