In a terrible mismatch, welterweight contender Alexis Rocha (23-1, 15 KOs) won his seventh consecutive fight with a fifth round knockout over fringe contender Anthony Young (24-3, 8 KOs) on Saturday night in the main event on DAZN at the Fantasy Springs Casino in Indio, California.
Rocha, 25, knocked Young down with a left to the head. When Young got back up, the referee waived it off after seeing that he was too hurt to continue.
Young was literally staggering after he got back up, so it makes sense that the fight was halted. The time of the stoppage was at 2:15 of the fifth.
Rocha hurt the 35-year-old Young in the fourth round with a hard body shot. In between rounds, Young’s trainer told him, “You got to show me something,” letting him know he would stop the fight.
Young’s problem was that he wasn’t following his corner’s instructions. His trainer repeatedly told him to stay off the ropes because he was getting beaten up by the southpaw Rochaa, but he chose not to follow the advice.
The win for Rocha was his seventh consecutive since losing to Rashidi Ellis by a 12 round decision in 2020. It’s difficult to know if Rocha has improved since that loss because, as we witnessed tonight, he was getting hit a lot by Young. If Rocha had been in with a better fighter than this guy, he would have had a lot of problems.
Rocha wants to fight the winner of the Errol Spence Jr vs. Terence Crawford fight, but that’s unlikely to happen. The Golden Boy promoted Rocha doesn’t have a large fanbase.
Indeed, his fight with Young created no buzz at all with fans. It’s likely that Spence and Crawford will ignore Rocha and go up to 154 after theey fight a couple of times.
Undercard fights:
In the seventh round, lightweight Oscar Duarte (25-1, 21 KOs) stopped D’Angelo Keyes (17-3, 11 KOs). Keyes was knocked down twice, once in the third and another time in the seventh. In the seventh, the contest was halted by the ring physician.
Super flyweight John ‘Scrappy’ Ramirez (12-0, 8 KOs) kept his undefeated record intact with a closer than expected 10 round unanimous decision over Fernando Diaz (12-4-1, 4 KOs).
The scores weere 96-94, 96-94 for Ramirez, and 96-94 for Diaz. This was not the kind of performance that ‘Scrappy’ needed for him to be viewed as a threat to the top dogs at 115.
If he’d been fighting Junto Nakatani tonight, he would have been knocked out.