This post will cover the three fights from the two DAZN cards with the follow-up post covering the ESPN and Showtime cards from Top Rank and PBC respectively.
The main event of the Golden Boy card from Frisco Texas saw one of the two young welterweights that none of the elites of the division want to face stop his best opponent to date as Vergil Ortiz (Jaron Ennis is the other) stopped Egidijus Kavaliauskas in the eighth round with four knockdowns in the final round before referee Lawrence Cole ended the affair.
Ortiz dropped Kavaliauskas in the third round with a straight shot in close but the biggest news in this one was Kavaliauskas hurting Ortiz in the second round.
Give Ortiz credit for stemming the tide and proving some mettle against the power of a top ten welterweight like Kavaliauskas but it may have placed the thought into the minds of the welterweights rated above him that Ortiz can be hurt.
I had Ortiz ahead 68-64 at the time of the stoppage.
Ortiz is the number one rated contender in the WBO to champion Terence Crawford but the WBO has instead forced Crawford to negotiate with their second rated contender Shawn Porter.
I'm not complaining a bit about the prospect of Crawford-Porter, which would be a tremendous battle, but what's the point of being the number one contender if the sanctioning body mandates the champion fighting the number two guy?
I'm not sure what Ortiz does from here.
He could use more experience but Golden Boy doesn't really have any welterweights to test him and even if they did- should Ortiz fight someone that could cost him that number one rating?
What we found out about Vergil Ortiz against Kavaliauskas might be all we know until his eventual title challenge.
In the co-feature, Roger Gutierrez won a split decision over Rene Alvarado to retain the WBA minor title that means anything ( explained here) and win the third fight between the two.
This wasn't as exciting as their previous fighters as both fighters seemed a bit tentative against a fighter that knew them so well. and there were many lulls in the action.
In the end, the taller and heavier punching Gutierrez did just enough pecking and pawing from the outside with his jab to win the split decision officially and on my card 115-113.
Earlier in the afternoon from Eddie Hearn's palatial estate (as they used to say on Batman) in Brentwood England, undefeated light heavyweight Joshua Buatasi stopped a game Ricard Bolotniks in the eleventh round in the type of fight that every young contender needs before stepping to the championship level.
Buatasi dropped Bolotniks down in the sixth round and appeared to be poised to finish the veteran off for a spectacular win but Bolotniks survived the attack and even had a few moments of his own in the next few round before Buatasi concluded the fight in the eleventh with a right hand that sent Bolotniks sprawled along the ropes forcing the ending.
Buatasi lost a point for low blows in the eighth round but I still had him far ahead in the fight after ten rounds at 97-91.
That's exactly the type of middle-range fights that young fighters get experience from when a veteran just won't fall down the first time that they get cracked by a big puncher and I think it'll be the advantage of Buatasi for doing so.
In the boxing challenge, Ramon Malpica and I each added three points from the DAZN cards and moved the total to 111-97.
I'll be back with the weekend from Top Rank on ESPN and the snoozer from PBC on Showtime.
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