Boxing Challenge: Estrada, Gonzalez win to set rematch

DAZN's Friday night card with two titles at stake in the junior bantamweight division received quite a boost with the main event turning into a battle that won't be forgotten anytime soon as Juan Francisco Estrada retained his WBC title with an eleventh round stoppage of challenger Carlos Cuadras in Mexico City.

Cuadras started very quickly and raced to an early lead with a knockdown of Estrada in round three as the highlight of the initial rounds.

Estrada wasn't severely hurt, but the knockdown from a right uppercut and glancing left hook gave Cuadras hopes of ruining the expected Estrada-Roman Gonzalez fight early in 2021.

In the fifth round, Estrada began to turn the tide as Cuadras began to breathe through his mouth, throw fewer punches and those that were thrown were far wider than in the early rounds.

The technically sound Estrada connected with accurate shots to the head and to the body and slowly began to take more and more energy from Cuadras by the round to take a small lead.

Cuadras made a last stand by winning the tenth round, but Estrada closed the show in round eleven with two knockdowns that saw a courageous Cuadras exchange punches as best he could before a right hand swiveled the head of Cuadras and allow the referee to end the fight.

I had Estrada slightly ahead after ten rounds, 95-94 (6-4 with the Cuadras knockdown), and would have clinched a decision win after the eleventh, had Cuadras survived.

The other title fight saw the WBA version of the 115-pound division championship defended as Roman "Chocolatito" Gonzalez won a clear, but not easy unanimous decision over a determined Israel Gonzalez.

The taller Israel Gonzalez won the first two rounds on my card and was never hurt by Chocolatito, but also couldn't keep the champion's pressure slowed enough to make a claim thereafter other than winning the tenth round for my final card of 117-111 for the champion.

A solid victory for Roman Gonzalez in his first title defense after defeating Kal Yafai earlier this year and a unification match with Juan Francisco Estrada looks likely for early next season in what is one of the most anticipated fights in the game.

Gonzalez won a close unanimous decision over Estrada to defend his then-flyweight title in 2012 when Estrada was the first fighter to keep the fight close against Gonzalez, who was ranked at the time as one of the best pound for pound fighters in the world.

WBC flyweight champion Julio Cesar Martinez won a non-title fight by second-round knockout over Moises Calleros.

The fight was scheduled to be a title fight, but Calleros missed weight badly as a late replacement with the fight continuing as a non-title bout.

The extra weight didn't help any as Martinez dropped Calleros in the first round with a left hook and battered him into submission in the second round for the victory.

In the boxing challenge, Ramon Malpica and I each scored four points to move the total to 135-126 in my favor...