The main event saw a rematch of one of 2018's best fights of the year as Juan Francisco Estrada reversed the narrative of the first fight by building a lead and holding off the rally of Srisaket Sor Rungvisai to win a unanimous decision to take Rungvisai's WBC junior bantamweight title.
In the first fight, Rungvisai banked several rounds and managed to survive the late surge of Estrada to retain his championship via majority decision, but in the rematch, it was Estrada with the fast start and held a healthy 7-1 lead at the end of the eighth round.
Estrada commanded the fight with his jab and a seemingly confused Rungvisai seemed to be resigned to his eventual title loss being beaten to the punch at almost every turn.
Suddenly, the fight turned to start the ninth as Rungvisai shifted to the lefthanded stance, began to rally back to drill Estrada with his straight left and even appeared to sting Estrada a bit in the 11th.
On my card, Estrada had the fight in the bag, but if one or two rounds were closer, who knows about the cards and Estrada had to feel the same way.
Estrada ran with that and won the final round to win on my card 116-112, but more importantly, on the official cards where had Rungvisai won the final round, he would have saved his title with a majority draw.
My score seemed to be in the middle as many of Twitter watchers and the DAZN commentators had Estrada up by as many as ten points (10-2 in rounds) with yet others such as Steve Kim of ESPN giving the fight to Estrada by two official cards of 115-113.
Estrada seemed amenable to a third fight if he couldn't sign a unification fight against one of the other three champions.
The WBO title is currently vacant and IBF champion Jerwin Ancajas is with Top Rank, making that bout difficult, but WBA beltholder Kal Yafai is also with Matchroom/DAZN and that should be easy enough to make.
I'd be fine with a rubber match as this fight wasn't quite as good as their first, but it was strong enough in the entertainment factor and Rungvisai's late-round swing as a southpaw gives one a reason to think that Rungvisai could win the third bout.
The fight of the night was the co-main as Daniel Roman kept his WBA 122 pound belt and added the IBF title of T.J. Doheny via a majority decision in a great action fight.
Roman dropped Doheny in the second round with a hook, but Doheny wasn't seriously hurt and was close on the cards when Doheny badly hurt Roman with a left that had Roman backing up in the seventh and was looking to survive by the end of the round.
That was the pinnacle for Doheny however as Roman began to rip the Irishman fighting out of Australia to the body and bust his face up to boot as he re-established control.
Roman's bodywork continued to badly hurt Doheny, who began to drop his hands to better protect the body and that cost him as a Roman left dropped him to a knee in the eleventh for the final nail on the scorecards.
Doheny gamely rose and gritted his way to the final bell, but clearly was the loser on the scorecards, if not with the fans after an exciting give and take battle.
I had Roman a 116-110 winner (8-4 with two Roman knockdowns) which matched the two cards for Roman.
Roman looks ahead for another unification soon against WBC champion Rey Vargas, who fights for Golden Boy Promotions, but their deal with DAZN makes fights with Matchroom fighters relatively easy to make.
Should Vargas win his mandated bout against WBC top contender and former champion Julio Ceja, a Roman-Vargas fight for three of the four titles seems to be in the works.
The opener was another fight filled with exchanges as former WBA junior welterweight and WBO welterweight champion Jessie Vargas stopped another former two-division champion (WBC in both junior lightweight and lightweight) Humberto Soto in the sixth round of a junior middleweight matchup.
Soto started strong and battled evenly for the first five rounds against the naturally larger Vargas. but you could feel that Soto didn't think that he could sustain that pace for ten rounds and was trying for an early win.
Soto looked worn out entering the sixth and Vargas took advantage, pounding him until Soto fell from a right hand.
Soto rose but was overwhelmed by an intense series of shots that forced referee Thomas Taylor to step in and maybe even a bit too late.
Vargas is looking for a third title against WBO (and DAZN) junior middleweight champion Jaime Munguia, who has looked very vulnerable in his last two outings.
Vargas had better get Munguia, should he want a title in the division as the other belts (WBA/IBF Jarrett Hurd and WBC Tony Harrison) reside with the PBC for the time being.
As for Soto, who knocked out Brandon Rios in his last fight, he needs to be matched carefully and not against any big punchers.
This loss was the first actual stoppage of Soto's career (He had lost some fights through other measures that didn't reach the distance, but wasn't knocked out) and despite his efforts and courage, Soto doesn't have ten or twelve rounds in him against world-class competition anymore.
In the boxing challenge, I earned three points to Ramon Malpica's two to increase my challenge lead to 97-87.
I added one point apiece for the three winners in the challenge, while Ramon scored one point with the wins by Roman and Vargas, but picked Rungvisai for the point difference.
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