After a fairly even three rounds with Gaballo having some success boxing Donaire from the outside, it only took one left hook to the body of Gaballo from the man that he idolized growing up in the Philippines to end the fight as Gaballo dropped to the floor, got up off the canvas but couldn't maintain his ability to stand up before returning to the canvas in pain where he was counted out.
Donaire had hoped to face WBA and IBF champion Naoya Inoue in a rematch of their 2019 fight of the year but was forced into a mandatory defense against Gaballo and hopefully, the rematch can be arranged.
The co-feature saw the upset of the weekend as undefeated and untested Canadian Cody Crowley won a unanimous decision over Kudratillo Abdukakhhorov and with the victory cost Abdukakhhorov his number one contender slot in the IBF and a guaranteed title shot at Errol Spence.
Abdukakhhorov scored a second-round knockdown on a counter right but Crowley wasn't seriously buzzed and thereafter the fight continued with Crowley backing up Abdukakhhorov, who clearly wasn't used to that happening and struggled to stop Crowley's aggression.
I scored the fight 97-92 for Crowley and in a just world, it would be Crowley that would move into the number one slot with the IBF and get the shot at Spence but Crowley was unranked and this is boxing so that's unlikely to happen- BUT...
When you look at the IBF ratings, the loss by Abdukakhhorov opens up a very intriguing possibility.
Abdukakhhorov was rated first and there was no one in the second slot but the next two fighters at third and fourth are very interesting- Undefeated welterweight bombers Jaron "Boots" Ennis and Vergil Ortiz!
The IBF could order a dream Ennis-Ortiz matchup that would likely never happen due to competing promoters and although it's unlikely to be made as one side or the other could refuse to participate, there is a chance that both sides could see this as a way to speed up their eventual title shot.
Ennis vs Ortiz would be quite a fight and all because of little Cody Crowley.
From Russia, Dmitry Bivol dominated Umar Salamov and won yet another humdrum unanimous decision to retain his WBA light heavyweight title.
Bivol boxed the crude Salamv throughout, never dropped him or hurt him in winning the decision (119-109 on my card).
Bivol will defend against the winner of this weekend's Gilberto Ramirez-Yuneski Gonzalez fight in San Antonio.
An interesting co-feature was scrapped in the dressing room as undefeated Magomed Kurbanov came down with an over 100-degree fever and was scratched from his junior middleweight fight against former WBO champion Patrick Teixeira.
The winner would have been in an excellent position to face either WBO champion Brian Castano or number one contender Tim Tszyu as Kurbanov entered the fight rated second with Teixeira in the fourth spot in the WBO ratings.
In the boxing challenge. Ramon Malpica outscored me three to two in these fights and cut my lead to 169-153.
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