By Jeff Sorby: Fighting for the first time at middleweight Curtis Stevens (23-0, 17 KO’s) destroyed Elvin Ayala (26-6-1, 12 KO’s) in the 1st round on Saturday night to capture the vacant NABF middleweight title at the Mohegan Sun Casino, in Uncasville, Connecticut.
The 5’7” Stevens knocked the 32-year-old Ayala down twice in the fight before the fight was halted at 1:10 of the 1st round by referee Tony Chiarantano.
The first knockdown came when Stevens landed a hard left hook to the jaw that sent Ayala collapsing backwards on the canvas. Surprisingly the referee allowed the fight to continue seeing that Ayala was badly hurt and looked shaky as he got back to his feet. Stevens immediately jumped on Ayala as soon as the action resumed and was able to back Ayala back up against the ropes where he dropped him for a second time with another big left hook to the jaw. This time the referee wisely halted the fight.
Stevens looks pretty powerful at 160. He’s a lot better at this weight than he was fighting the much bigger super middleweights. However, it’s still going to be tough for him to be able to beat the better middleweights due to his lack of height. This was only the second fight for the 27-year-old Stevens following a two year layoff from 2010 to 2012.
Stevens can really punch at middleweight and it’s going to be nice to see what he can do against better middleweights.
After the fight Ayala said “I just got caught. He’s a big puncher, he’s definitely a big puncher. I wanted to show my balls and I got caught. It’s part of boxing. It was a perfect training camp but I got caught. That’s what it is.”
Other boxing results:
Sergey Kovalev TKO 3 Gabriel Campillo
Marcus Upshaw TKO 8 Vladine Biosse
Jason Sosa TKO 4 Joseph Perez
Jimmy Williams KO 4 Noel Garcia
Edwin Cotto TKO 4 Ian James
Jarrell Miller Draw 4 Joey Dawejko