Manfredo and Gardner win middleweight battles

27.04 - Middleweight fighters Peter Manfredo Jr. and Ian Gardner took different routes but had the same results in the second Mohegan Sun Fight Night New England fight card sponsored by Cappiello Promotions on Saturday night at the Shaw's Center.

Manfredo needed less than two rounds to knock out Ronnie Johnson to remained undefeated with a career mark of 17-0. Gardner, whose only career loss was to Manfredo Jr. 18 months ago improved to 11-1 with a sixth-round knockout of Michael McFail.

Gardner started out strongly and looked as if he would, like Manfredo, knock out his opponent in the second round. However, McFail, to his credit hung tough and actually landed a few solid punches in the middle rounds before Gardner began the sixth round with a flurry of punches which ended the fight.

"He started strongly, perhaps two strongly," said Goody Petronelli, Gardner's trainer. "I wanted to make sure he got his work in, I wanted him to get in as many rounds as possible. He did well and I thought the referee made a wise move stopping the fight because Ian would not have stopped punching until he did."

Randolph's Billy Mofford and Taunton's Henry Rodrigues put on the most entertaining fight of the evening as the heavyweight battle went the distance with Mofford winning an unanimous decision. Rodrigues came out as the aggressor in this six-round battle as he was looking for the "home run" punch that would end this rematch early. Mofford, who won a four-round decision in the first meeting between these two teams, worked the body effectively through the middle rounds as Rodrigues began to lose steam on his punches. Rodrigues also had a point taken away in the fifth round as he would fall short on all three cards losing, 59-54, 60-53 and 58-56.

Willie Gibbs was on the defensive in the first round of his middleweight fight with Benjamin Marquez but it was a different story in the second round as Gibbs improved to 13-0 with a combination that knocked out the 43-year old challenger. Eric Pinaretta of New Bedford improved to 1-1 when after a slow start, he rebounded to beat veteran Rick Zola. Pinaretta had to two solid shots to the jaw and a flurry of punches in the third to overcome a lackluster first round to beat Zola.

The highly anticipated rematch between Brockton middleweight and former Massachusetts middleweight champion Mike Culbert and Dave Hamilton of Hanson was canceled by order of the ringside doctor.