What was supposed to be a big night for brothers Ronny Rios and Alexis Rocha turned out to be a disaster, as Rios suffered a brutal defeat at the hands of Azat "Crazy" Hovhannisyan.
Hovhannisyan battered Rios in a sixth-round TKO on Friday night at The Hangar at The OC Fair & Event Center in Costa Mesa, California.
It was a fast-paced slugging match from the start as both boxers exchanged hard shot on relatively even term the first two rounds. In the third, however, Hovhannisyan connected with three right hands to the temple that hurt Rios and forced him to hold in order to survive.
An accidental head butt in the fourth raised a large hematoma on the right side of Rios' forehead. Rios, of Santa Ana, California, seemed to recover somewhat in the fifth, but he was knocked down in the sixth with a flush right to the head.
Hovhannisyan, 29, continued to punish Rios, 28, with heavy right hands and left hooks. Rios was staggering around the ring on rubber legs with a dazed look on his face when referee Jack Reiss stopped the scheduled 10-rounder at 1:12 of the sixth round.
Hovhannisyan (14-2, 11 KOs) is an Armenian living in Los Angeles. It was his first fight under trainer Freddie Roach, best known for training Manny Pacquiao. Rios (29-3, 13 KOs) was hoping a win would lead to a title fight.
During the first round of their welterweight bout, Alexis Rocha sends Miguel Dumas to the floor with an uppercut, and shortly after Dumas gets back up, Rocha lands a vicious combo to score the knockout.
In the co-feature, Rocha, 20, scored an impressive first-round knockout of Miguel Dumas, 24, in a welterweight bout scheduled for eight rounds.
Rocha, also of Santa Ana, immediately launched an attacked at the sound of the opening bell, pressuring Dumas into the ropes and whacking away at the body with both hands. Dumas, of Tijuana, Mexico, punched back but could not stop Rocha's assault.
A left uppercut to the chin sent Dumas (10-2, 10 KOs) down the first time, but he beat the count. Rocha (11-0, 8 KOs) moved in for the finished and put Dumas down again with a series of left hooks.
Referee Edward Hernandez stopped the fight at the 1:49 mark, with Dumas still on the canvas.
Maricela "La Diva" Cornejo (10-2, 3 KOs) stopped Lisa Garland at 1:09 of the fourth round of a scheduled six-round middleweight bout. Cornejo, of Los Angeles, landed the harder punches throughout and was especially successful with her right hand.
Garland (15-10, 8 KOs), of York, South Carolina, absorbed hard rights to the head in the fourth and turned away, forcing referee Raul Caiz Jr. to halt the bout.