Boring. Strange. Ugly. A disqualification. The second main event in boxing’s comeback was the sport at its worst.
Jessie Magdaleno, the former 122-pound titleholder, outclassed Yenifel “Foul-a-minute” Vicente for the entire featherweight fight in an empty MGM Grand ballroom Thursday night in Las Vegas but was too passive for those hoping for some action.
Vicente? He was nothing short of a villain. The fact he lost by disqualification at 1:38 of the 10th and final round couldn’t have been more appropriate.
Magdaleno (28-1, 18 KOs) put Vicente (36-5-2, 28 KOs) down with a right hook about two minutes into the fight, which signaled to the typically aggressive Dominican that he might want to be careful.
The result was yawner of fight in which both participants posed more than they punched, waiting for openings that didn’t come often enough to keep those watching at home awake. Magdaleno did enough to win rounds, at least on two cards, but he didn’t look like the star he hopes to be.
Meanwhile, Vicente, known for flouting rules, turned a mundane fight into a profoundly ugly one.
The worst came in Round 4. About halfway through the round, Vicente landed a hard right hand below the belt. Magdaleno, clearly in pain, winced, reached down to his crotch and turned to his side as referee Robert Byrd said “stop” and rushed to come between them.
However, just as Byrd was arriving, Vicente landed a right to side of Magdaleno’s head and put him down on his face. He didn’t move for several moments, which raised immediate concerns that the fight would end this way.
Finally, after Magdaleno took most of the allotted five minutes to recover, Bryd took two points from Vicente and the fight resumed, settling back into a mostly uneventful waiting game that produced almost no further drama until Vicente landed another low blow, for which he lost another point.
Vicente went down again from a short right hook in Round 5, the only interesting moment until the final round.
In Round 10, Vicente, obviously desperate, landed his third low blow seconds after the bell to open the stanza. He lost yet another point. And, finally, about a minute and a half before the end of the fight, Vicente strayed low one last time.
And that was it. Byrd, at his wits end, ended the debacle and awarded Magdaleno a DQ victory.
The final tally reveals that Vicente lost four points because of fouls, the result of the three knockdowns and the late punch. And he was on the wrong end of two 10-8 rounds because of the knockdowns.
Thus, Magdaleno led by nine points on two cards – only by four on the third, somehow – and was on his way to a one-sided decision victory.
“He knew what he was doing,” Magdaleno said of Vicente’s dirty tactics. “His way [was] to get me low. Tough guy. But I wasn’t going to let him get in my head. I kept my composure, got the win and move on to the next one.”
Magdaleno is the No. 1 challenger for Gary Russell Jr.’s featherweight title. It’s not clear when that fight might happen but it’s Magdaleno’s goal to get the quick-handed former Olympian into the ring.
“Gary Russell, I’m coming for you,” he said. “But like I’ve said before, I want any of the champions at 126 pounds. I want to be a two-division world champion. Simple as that.”
The rest of us never want to see Vicente fight again.
In preliminaries, Adam Lopez defeated Louie Coria by a majority decision in a fast-paced, entertaining 10-round featherweight fight.
Coria opened the fight on fire, pounding Lopez on the inside in the first two rounds. Then, beginning in Round 3, Lopez, the better boxer, began to move and unleash his quick jab – followed by hard rights –with consistency to take control of the fight.
Coria (12-3, 7 KOs) continued to attack from Rounds 3 to 8 but could neither get past the jab nor get Lopez (14-2, 6 KOs) to stand in front of him long enough to land enough punches to win rounds.
Then, in Round 9, a seemingly weary Lopez stopped moving as he had been and the fight reverted to a brawl. That favored Coria, who did well in the final two rounds. However, in the end it wasn’t enough.
Afterward, Lopez, both eyes almost swollen shut, called it “my toughest fight.”
Afterward, Lopez, both eyes almost swollen shut, acknowledged that Coria gave him all he could handle.
“That was my toughest fight to date,” he said. “I used to say my fight with Jean Carlos Rivera was my toughest fight, but this one was definitely my toughest fight. He was relentless. I hurt my hand hitting him that many times with my jab.
“Listen, I want to fight anyone Top Rank puts in front of me. This was a great, close fight, and I have the utmost respect for Louie Coria.”
Lopez, the son of the late 1984 Olympic silver medalist Hector Lopez, earned respect in his last fight by putting talented 130-pounder Oscar Valdez down before being stopped in Round 7 even though he took the fight on one day’s notice.
Gabriel Muratalla (3-0, 3 KOs) stopped Fernando Robles (2-3, 0 KOs) 2:33 into a scheduled four-round bantamweight bout.
Muratalla, a pre-school teacher near Los Angeles by day and fighter by night, punctuated a flurry of punches with a hard right to the side of Robles head and hit the canvas, where he stayed. Referee Robert Bryd determined he couldn’t continue and waved off the fight.
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