Boxing Challenge: Rungvisai nips Estrada.

HBO Sports

The boxing challenge had a rarity in the last few weeks as the World Boxing Super Series did NOT have the best fight of the weekend!
I wrote about the Callum Smith victory earlier Saturday, so that does not need to be recapped.

The four-bout show from Los Angeles (3 televised by HBO) featured some strong action and the main event was a fight good enough in the ring and close enough on the scorecards to consider doing it again.
Sriasket Sor Rungvisai retained his WBC junior bantamweight title by the width of a paper sheet with a majority decision win over Juan Francisco Estrada in a thrilling fight.
Rungvisai built a lead and held off the late charge of Estrada including a twelfth round that is as good as you'll see this year.
Rungvisai earned the votes of two judges with a reasonable 115-113 and a ridiculous 117-111 overruling a 114-114 draw card that agreed with my personal card.

McWilliams Arroyo pulled off a surprising upset of heavily favored Carlos Cuadras via a majority decision.
Cuadras started well as he did in his close loss to Juan Francisco Estrada, but again relaxed and allowed Arroyo to get back into the fight.
I scored Arroyo a close 96-94 winner, but would not have argued with the same score that chose Cuadras as the victor.

Donnie Nietes retained his IBF Flyweight title with a seventh-round knockout of Juan Carlos Reveco.
I had Nietes winning every round when he nailed Reveco with a right hand late in the sixth that sent Reveco wobbling to his corner.
Nietes finished Reveco less than a minute into the next round for the victory.

In the non-televised title fight (Thanks to Ring.Tv for showing the fight live) Artem Dalakian won the vacant WBA flyweight title with a unanimous decision over veteran Brian Viloria.
I had Dalakian a 115-112 winner (One point deducted from Dalakian for pushing down on Viloria), but an elbow that sliced Viloria's forehead open in the eleventh and produced as ugly of a gash as you could see in the ring caused Viloria to visibly slow down and gave Dalakian the final two rounds to put the victory and championship away.
The scores were far too lopsided for my tastes, but the winner was the correct one.
The time may be the right one for the 37-year-old Viloria to consider walking away from the game.

In the boxing challenge, I scored four points to Ramon Malpica's three on the weekend to move my lead to 26-21

I received two points from Artem Dalakian's win and one each from Donnie Nietes and Callum Smith.
Ramon added one point each from wins by Rungvisai, Nietes, and Smith.