What a great weekend of boxing. I was focused on two fighters on the undercards of each show. On the Jojo Diaz Jr. versus Devin Haney in Las Vegas, NV, a Robert Garcia trained middleweight was scheduled to fight his tenth pro fight. He said in an interview prior to the bout that he has wanted to fight at the MGM Grand since he was a kid. And now his opportunity is here. Alexis Espino fought to a draw versus Rodolfo Gomez Jr. The fight was for eight rounds and for the length of the bout, Alexis fought going forward, looking to set up his combination using his jab and hooks to the body. In my opinion Gomez was the more active of the two fighters but Espino was the more accurate hard hitting puncher.
I really enjoyed the main event. Jojo is a Lightweight Southpaw from a city I worked in for a summer back in 2016, South El Monte. El Monte is a city near Los Angeles, it’s next to Baldwin Park to the east, Temple City to the North, Rosemead to the West and Montebello/South El Monte to the South. There’s tons of boxing gyms in the area and several professional fighters have come out of the San Gabriel Valley area. Oscar DeLaHoya at one point owned a car dealership in the area. Going into the fight Jojo only had one loss on his pro career against Gary Russell Jr. and Devin Haney was undefeated. Haney was hurt pretty bad at the end of one of the rounds in his fight versus Jorge Linares and he received heavy criticism for asking Linares post fight, if he hit as hard as one of his previous opponents in Vasiliy Lomachenko? Linares didn’t really answer the question, he kind of shrugged it off. Jojo fought the entire fight moving forward and had success in spurts. The seventh round was one of Jojo’s most impressive rounds, landing some big left hand power shots. Jojo sometimes work really hard to get Haney against the ropes but it seemed to me that Haney, as soon as he felt his back on the ropes, he let his hands go and pivoted swiftly out of the trap, not allowing Jojo to throw combinations for power shots. What impressed me most about Haney was his development. He used to tie up his opponents after tough exchanges and he seemed to go away from that in this fight. It was his jab that kept the shorter Jojo at bay and always out of distance. Bill Haney had a number of coaches in his son’s corner, including Ben Davidson. Bill seemed to do most of the talking in the breaks but the fact that he’s surrounding his won with other very talented and successful trainers means a lot for the upcoming fights.
I really enjoyed the Tank Davis versus Isaac Pitbull Cruz bout in Los Angeles. Cruz has a very disciplined defense and attacked Davis all 12 rounds. There was a point in the first round where Cruz slipped and it the canvas and was ruled a slip by the ref. And the same slip happened for Davis in the eleventh or twelfth, also ruled a slip. The ref did a decent job of getting the fighters untangled, which happened a lot during this fight. Many times you can see the grit and toughness in Tank as he hit Cruz multiple times to the body and he lay on top of Cruz, while Cruz was bent completely forward unable to defend himself. Davis received a couple lengthy warning from the ref in order for him to stop from committing fouls. As far as I know there were no point deductions and no knockdowns other than the slips by both fighters. The fight was win for Tank Davis but Pitbull Cruz stock just skyrocketed through roof for going twelve hard rounds for what many are claiming to be the hardest hitting puncher in the Lightweight division.
In Stockton Ca, Toscano promotions held a boxing show. Three of Robert Garcia’s fighters came out victorious, Gabriel Muratalla, Arturo Cardenas and Felix Soria.
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