Big-hitting Miguel Berchelt retained his WBC junior lightweight title when the corner representing former champion Francisco Vargas refused to allow the bout to continue following the sixth round.
Berchelt didn't escape from this one unscathed as Vargas landed his share over an entertaining six rounds, but the bigger puncher was landing more and those shots were busting up the face of the valiant but outgunned former champion and I think the decision by Vargas trainer Joel Diaz was the correct one, even if Vargas was still landing against Berchelt.
While Vargas can still be part of some entertaining fights if matched properly (think of the length of the career of Jesus Soto-Karass or Humberto Soto as two examples) matched properly are the keywords as he has to have an opponent that he won't have to chase and preferably one that isn't a younger opponent that can bang a bit, it's Berchelt with the brighter future.
Berchelt has called out Vasyl Lomachenko and that would be an easy fight to make, but he also challenged the winner of May 25th's WBO title fight in the division between Masayuki Ito and Jamel Herring, which can also be easily made to add a second title, but the best fight in the division would be more difficult to put together with Berchelt battling WBA champion Gervonta Davis.
Berchelt would have the height and reach advantage, but Davis would have a vast edge in hand speed and I'd rate Berchelt with slightly more power.
That fight is the best fight in the division to be made and while I'm more than fine with Berchelt vs Ito/Herring and I'd be OK with the much-hyped, but no real progress on the social media oriented Davis unification fight with IBF champion Tevin Farmer to unify as well, but Berchelt and Davis shouldn't have problems with either and makes Berchelt vs Davis the unquestioned decider in settling the question of who is the best in the division.
Emanuel Navarrete repeated his victory over Isaac Dogboe to make his first defense of the WBO junior featherweight title a successful one when Dogboe's cornerman (his father) threw in the towel in the twelfth and final round.
Dogboe was knocked down in the sixth but was in serious trouble several times throughout the fight and despite fighting better in the rematch than in their first encounter, the far shorter Dogboe was unable to dodge the longer Navarrete's punches from long range, especially the jab which seemed to be magnetized to his and was outworked by the champion, which taken by itself was a bad sign for Dogboe, who usually is able to mark his will on his opponent simply by overwhelming them with a large mass of punches, but has now twice been unable to do that to Navarrete.
Dogboe's effort may have been better in the second fight, but his face told the tale and a real argument could be made (and the ESPN crew of Tessitore, Ward, and Bradley made that argument) that the fight went on far too long with the beating that Dogboe was taking perhaps being a career-long impediment.
Dogboe announced after the loss that making 122 pounds has been difficult and he'll be moving to featherweight.
If the beatings that he has taken against Navarrete hasn't taken away any of his skills and was just a bad style match for him, Dogboe could face WBO champion Oscar Valdez, Carl Frampton or IBF champion Josh Warrington in entertaining events, but I'd be surprised if Dogboe fights on without any negative effects.
As for Navarrete, he'll likely face some lesser contenders for a while as the other division champions Danny Roman (WBA and IBF) and Rey Vargas (WBC) not only appear to be on a collision course for each other, both fight on DAZN and although the Eddie Hearn half of DAZN (Roman) has worked with Top Rank, Golden Boy (Vargas) has been more reticent to do so.
In the boxing challenge, Ramon Malpica and I each added three points from the Top Rank slate, two from Berchelt and one from Navarette.
The score stands in my favor at 121-104.
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