Sunday, April 25, 2021

Boxing Challenge: Navarrete stops Diaz in 12, Berlanga streak snapped

 Emanuel Navarrete retained his WBO featherweight title when he stopped a brave Christopher Diaz in the final seconds of round twelve.

Navarrete scored knockdowns in the fourth round, two more in the eighth, and again in the final round with Diaz's trainer Nelson Rodriguez signaling surrender for his man shortly after a battered Diaz rose from the floor.

Diaz was deducted a point in round seven for kidney punches and trailed on my card 107-98 going into the final round.

Give Diaz full credit for toughness and he landed his share of punches against Navarrete, but Navarrete was far too strong and sharp with his shots against Diaz.

This was one of those bouts that was dominated by one fighter, yet the loser made the fight entertaining and just competitive enough to enjoy watching.

If Diaz hasn't had a lot taken out of him by such a brutal defeat, he's likely made himself some fans due to his heart in the loss.

As for Navarrete, he's in a bit of a pickle at 126.

Navarrete's best fights appear to be difficult to make with WBA champion Leo Santa Cruz (who for some reason still holds their title despite not fighting in the division for 26 months and counting) and WBC champion Gary Russell ( who fights exactly once a year against his mandatory and then returns to his hole to hibernate like a cicada) both fighting for PBC.

Minor champion Xu Can might be the best and easiest fight to make with both guys throwing lots of punches and unafraid to take them either.

Can was scheduled to fight Josh Warrington in a unification fight of sorts with Warrington vacating his IBF title to face Can rather than fight a rematch against mandatory contender Kid Galahad, whom he defeated in 2019, but Warrington was knocked out by Mauricio Lara, so Can could be in search of an opponent.

Navarrete may decide to move up to 130 pounds where Top Rank is far better situated with WBC champion Oscar Valdez, WBO champion Jamel Herring, and Shakur Stevenson and could easily make any of those contests.

In the co-feature, the first-round knockout streak of undefeated Edgar Berlanga ended and his knockout string ended period as veteran Demond Nicholson took Berlanga the eight round distance.

Still, Berlanga was far from disappointing as he knocked Nicholson down four times and almost finished him in the final round with a knockdown with seconds remaining.

I scored Berlanga an 80-68 winner on my card.

A solid performance and one that Berlanga will learn from the experience from a tough journeyman such as Nicholson, who I would imagine will receive more fights after his determined effort against the big-banging Berlanga.

Berlanga is far from a refined product though and it's ridiculous that the even more ridiculous WBA has him ranked fifth in the world at this time, but the talent is there for a future star.

A word on the ESPN crew, which had a bad night in my opinion.

The best part of the end of the knockout streak for the promising Berlanga is that I no longer have to listen to Joe Tessitore breathlessly count down the seconds before the end of the round.

Tessitore's work seems to get worse by the card, and the fawning over Andre Ward, who always seems like the smug guy at work that you'd like to see water poured on, is especially sickening.

Case in point, Tessitore volunteers that Ward would come out of retirement for a fight with Canelo Alvarez, which I couldn't blame Ward for, and rambles about what an exciting fight it would be.

One can say many things about the undefeated career of Andre Ward and I have (most notably here)-

Exciting is not one of them.

I like Tim Bradley's energy, but he often seems to be in the "Hey Spike" role to Ward and that's too bad.

I think Bradley could be very good with a good play by play person to play to his strengths, but until he isn't forced to spend most of a card with "That's right, 'Dre", he isn't going to get there.

ESPN's production is very strong, but their announcing lags behind in a sport not filled with great commentating teams....

In Osaka, Japan, Kenshiro Teraji (Known as Ken Shiro) defended his WBC junior flyweight title via unanimous decision over countryman and mandatory challenger Tetsuya Hisada via unanimous decision.

I've only watched the first two rounds of the fight and will edit this later once I have finished watching.

In the boxing challenge, Ramon Malpica and I each scored four points to move our totals to 54-50 for the year to date.

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