David Morrell stopped fellow super middleweight contender Aidos Yerbossynuly in the 12th and final round at The Armory.
Morrell, who outboxed Yerbossynuly the entire fight, appeared to be on his way to a one-sided decision victory. However, the Cuban put his Kazakh counterpart down twice in the last round to finish him off.
The first knockdown was the result of a straight left from the southpaw early in the round. The knockout resulted from a right hook that hurt a worn out Yerbossynuly so badly that he couldn’t continue.
The official time of the stoppage was 2:34 of Round 12.
You can read a full report here.
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Brian Mendoza of Albuquerque stopped former 154-pound champ Jeison Rosario of the Dominican Republic in the fifth round of their scheduled 10-round 160-pound bout.
Mendoza, who took the fight on short notice, ended the fight with a perfect right uppercut that hurt Rosario and followed with a left as he was going down.
Rosario tried to get up but fell face first into the canvas as he did so, prompting the referee to stop the fight.
The official time was 35 seconds in Round 5.
Mendoza (21-2, 15 KOs) also put Rosario (23-4-1, 17 KOs) down with a left to the body in the second round.
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Middleweight contender Fiodor Czerkaszyn dominated veteran Nathaniel Galimore en route to winning a unanimous decision in a 10-round bout.
The official scores were 97-93, 99-91 and 100-90.
Czerkaszyn (21-0, 13 KOs) outboxed the hard-punching Galimore (22-6-1, 17 KOs) from beginning to end, consistently landing clean shots to every legal target and taking few punches himself.
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David Morrell will face fellow super middleweight contender Aidos Yerbossynuly on Saturday night in Minneapolis (Showtime).
The main portion of the card is set to begin at 9:10 p.m. ET / 6:10 p.m. PT.
Boxing Junkie will post results of the main event and other featured bouts immediately afterward. Simply return to this post when the time comes.
Full coverage – a fight story, photo gallery and analysis – will follow on separate posts the night of the fight and the following day.
Enjoy the fights!
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