Unbeaten Jaime Munguía (43-0, 34 KOs) defeated John Ryder (32-7, 18 KOs) in a four-knockdown, ninth-round TKO victory on Saturday night at the Footprint Center in Phoenix. Arizona.
Ryder hit the deck twice in the ninth round from heavy shots by Munguia, resulting in his corner throwing in the towel to have the fight stopped.
Munguia also knocked the 35-year-old Ryder down in rounds two and four. Ryder came back in round six and controlled the seventh and eighth rounds before getting stopped in the ninth.
After the contest, Munguia said that he would like to fight Canelo Alvarez next.
Whether this performance was good enough to get the title shot against Canelo is questionable. Although Munguia won, he was hurt a couple of times and looked like he was fading going into the ninth.
B247 will be here to give live updates & results of tonight.
– Unbeaten WBO minimumweight champion Oscar Collazo (9-0, 7 KOs) stopped Reyneris Gutierrez (10-2, 2 KOs) in the third round in the chief support bout. Collazo dropped Gutierrez in the third round and then finished him off with a follow-up flurry of shots, resulting in the referee stepping in to stop the fight. “When I have someone hurt, I go for the kill,” said Collazo afterward.
– Super middleweight Darius Fulghum (10-0, 9 KOs) defeated Alantez Fox (28-6-1, 13 KOs) by a ten-round majority decision. In this fight, Fulghum saw his nine-fight consecutive knockout streak end.
Although he gave it his best shot to get the KO, Fox hung in there and took his best punches to make it the full ten-round distance.
Fox, 31, did a good job of making it messy, clinching and fighting awkwardly to survive the full distance in a fight where he looked out of his league.
The heavy-handed Fulghum had Fox close to being stopped in the seventh round after bombarding him with a flurry of hard punches to the head. The judges scored 95-95, 99-90 and 98-92.
– IBF Female flyweight champion Gabriela Fundora (13-0, 6 KOs) held onto her title with a questionable tenth round TKO victory over previously unbeaten Christina Cruz (6-1, 0 KOs). The bout was stopped at 59 seconds of the tenth.
The outcome was marred by the referee stopping the fight after Cruz tripped over Fundora’s front foot, causing her to lose her balance and get turned around. Fundora took advantage of Cruz’s stumbling by hitting her with nonstop punches to the back of the head until the referee stopped the fight.
In the first rounds, Cruz got the better of the action, landing hard punches against the rail-thin Fundora, and controlling the action.
From the sixth, Fundora took over the fight, throwing combinations and sitting down on her left hands. She controlled the rounds and looked in the driver’s seat going into the tenth round.
– Super bantamweight David Picasso Romero (27-0-1, 15 KOs) had a really tough time tonight beating Erik Ruiz (17-10-1, 7 KOs) by a grueling ten round unanimous decision. The judges scored it 99-91, 98-92, and 98-92.
The performance showed that Picasso is going to have major problems when he eventually meets up with the talented opposition at 122, as he lacks power and gets hit too much. He’ll be a good career contender-level fighter, but not a world champion.
Picasso fought recklessly, throwing four to five punch combinations, trying to score a stoppage of the 31-year-old veteran, but he couldn’t do it. Although Picasso came close to getting Ruiz out in the third and fourth, he weathered the storms with his tough chin.
Ruiz seemed to hurt Picasso with a body shot in the fourth round to his left side. From that point on, Picasso fought tentatively, not unloading like he’d been doing early on.
Picasso appeared to be protecting his left side from the fifth round on, and he stopped throwing combinations and focused on punching with single shots.
Ruiz took advantage of the lack of aggressiveness by pressuring and landing shots and getting the better of the action in the last sic rounds. However, the judges gave Ruiz no credit.