|
Undefeated junior lightweight Lamont Roach Jr. forced Deivi Julio Bassa to stay on his stool at the start of the seventh round to win by technical knockout on Friday. Julio Bassa (20-5, 12 KOs) was substantially behind and taking a steady beating when his corner told referee Miguel Cansul Sansores that he was unable to continue. The fight was the main event of a Golden Boy on ESPN card at the Grand Oasis Cancun in Cancun, Mexico.  Roach (17-0-1, 7 KOs) had boxed to a controversial draw with Orlando Cruz in his previous bout in April and wanted to score a sensational victory to take the bitter taste out of his mouth. As it turned out, the end was somewhat anticlimactic. But the knockdown Roach scored in the third round with a crisp right to the head took away all of Bassa's ambition and paved the way to victory. Bassa, 37, of Monteria, Colombia, had little to offer other than his ability to survive the first six rounds. His main concern was to stay out of trouble, and the punches he managed to land were ineffective. Roach, 22, is a quick-handed boxer with a sharp punch but seemed hesitant to launch an all-out assault against his light-punching and much older adversary, and was content to gradually grind him down. In the co-feature, Juan Carlos Sanchez Jr. (24-6-1, 11 KOs) overcame a knockdown to win a unanimous eight-round decision over Florentino Perez (13-3-1, 7 KOs) in a battle of Mexican featherweights. Perez, of Monterrey, floored Sanchez, of Los Mochis, with a flush right to the head in the second, but that was his only moment of glory. Sanchez beat the count and out-boxed and outpunched Perez the rest of the way to win by scores of 76-75, 77-74 and 78-73. Sanchez, a former junior bantamweight titleholder, used intelligent footwork and his experience against world-class boxers to befuddle his aggressive, hard-hitting adversary. In the TV opener, Cancun's Alexis "El Peje" Bastar (12-1-1, 5 KOs) held off Mexico City's Rigoberto "Mowgly" Nava (3-2-2) to win a unanimous decision by triple scores of 57-56 in a sizzling six-round junior featherweight bout. The fight featured toe-to-toe exchanges in every round, with Bastar mainly targeting the head and Nava the body. Bastar's punches were sharper, but Nava never stopped coming and had his share of success in the action-packed bout. Bastar was penalized one point in the fourth round for hitting below the belt.
|
