I wrote in the preview that the welterweight pairing for a minor belt but importantly the mandatory position in the WBA for the Spence-Ugas winner between Radzhab Butaev and Eimantas Stanionis couldn't miss as an action fight and it turned out to be exactly that as Stanionis won a split decision to place him in line for tonight's Spence-Ugas victor.
Neither fighter scored a knockdown and neither did a lot of moving around the ring, leading to plenty of action and landed punches.
Stanionis landed more and the slightly harder punches against Butaev, who lost a point in the eleventh round for pushing down on Stanionis' head and still fought well against the stronger fighter.
Stanionis used his jab to get inside and work on Butaev and although it's not quite to this level, the Stanionis jab is a power jab and reminded me of how Gennady Golovkin uses his jab as a weapon not as one to probe or use from a distance.
I thought Stanonis was the winner at 116-111, which agreed with one of the winning cards for Stanionis with the other at 117-110, and was very surprised by the 114-113 card for Butaev which seemed way out of bounds.
It will be interesting to see if the WBA decides to strip the Spence-Ugas winner, should they not fight Stanonis next.
A unification fight against WBO champion Terence Crawford might get another allowance but Stanonis is in the picture and he'll be getting his shot sooner or later.
Junior welterweight prospect Brandun Lee was forced to go the ten round distance for the first time by veteran Zach Ochoa and despite getting hit more than he should in the final few rounds, Lee was able to get some good work in and was never threatened by Ochoa, who started to throw punches way too late to challenge Ochoa.
A nice win for Lee, who still has plenty of work to do before moving up a level in opposition but still looked strong enough going the ten rounds.
My score of 98-92 was in line with one judge with the other two scoring 99-91 for Lee.
No judges were needed in Manchester England with welterweight Conor Benn destroying veteran Chris Van Heerden in two rounds.
Benn and Van Heerden each fought well in the first round with both landing good shots but in the second round, Benn crunched Van Heerden with one right-hand bomb, and a few seconds and a strong flurry later, Van Heerden was crumpled in a corner and the referee saw no need for a count.
Benn's ready for bigger challenges but Matchroom really doesn't have a good fit for him right now, unless they want to massively overpay Terence Crawford to defend his WBO title in England, which wouldn't be a good idea anyway as Benn is nowhere near ready for a fighter of "Bud's" talent.
Benn's next opponent that would make sense would be light-hitting and undefeated Brit Michael McKinson, who has only two knockouts and bored watchers to sleep in McKinson's American debut.
Still, Matchroom has both fighters and McKinson is rated higher in the WBO (3rd to 5th) so a win would be worth something but after the fight, the name Amir Khan emerged as a possibility.
That's an awful idea considering what Khan looked like in his knockout loss to Kell Brook and it could get Khan badly hurt, so here is hoping that idea goes by the wayside.
Boxing Challenge
TRS: 56 Pts (4)
Vince Samano: 50 Pts (4)
Ramon Malpica: 46 Pts (4)
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