Mario Barrios punctuated a strong performance with a brutal knockout of Ryan Karl on the Gervonta Davis-Leo Santa Cruz card Saturday in San Antonio, Barrios’ hometown.
Barrios (26-0, 17 KOs) and Karl (18-3, 12 KOs) engaged in a spirited give-and-take fight for five-plus rounds of the scheduled 12-round 140-pound fight, although Barrios was more accurate with his punches and landed the bigger blows.
Then, in the sixth, came his biggest blow. A straight right forced Karl to one knee. He got up, held onto Barrios to regain his senses, started to fire back and then ran into a different problem.
A clash of heads caused a gruesome cut above and on the inside of his left eye, which immediately gushed blood. Karl was allowed to continue but, still hurt, he went down again under a flurry of punches and the fight was stopped.
The end came at 2:23 of Round 6.
“I knew he would come out hard,” Barrios said. “But I knew that his only chance, to come with everything. I was in there, patient, picking my shots. And I started to really land ’em and I got him out of there.”
Barrios was defending a secondary junior welterweight bout.
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