De La Hoya: Mayweather Was Pressured Into The Fight
February 28, 2015Shingo Wake Blasts Out Jimmy Paypa in One Round
February 28, 2015
Pablo Cesar Cano put in an exciting performance in the main event, and prospects Diego De La Hoya and Taishan Dong stayed unbeaten tonight.
Pablo Cesar Cano came back from just a three week break from the ring to beat Juan Carlos Abreu tonight in an exciting main event on Golden Boy Live, winning a majority decision on scores of 97-93, 96-94, and 95-95. BLH had it 97-93 for Cano.
Cano (29-4-1, 21 KO) was subbed in for the card on short notice, as was Abreu (18-2-1, 17 KO), after Randy Caballero had to cancel his scheduled IBF bantamweight title main event earlier this month. Cano had just beatn Jorge Silva via first round TKO on February 7, and jumped at the chance to get himself back on U.S. TV in a main event fight.
Cano was able to outland Abreu significantly, but the Dominican underdog proved a more capable foe than might have been expected of his paper-thin record. Cano landed 221 of 641 (34{785f1b6326cdeb4275f63506ca40214b5c07db8f245df0cea7927e7aae5a72b6}) of his punches, a very solid connect rate, while Abreu battled and landed 125 of 634 (20{785f1b6326cdeb4275f63506ca40214b5c07db8f245df0cea7927e7aae5a72b6}) of his total shots.
Abreu was able to cut Cano — which happens fairly easily — and landed some good shots that did back the Mexican fighter off, especially later in the fight. But the first half and change of this fight was Cano showing his superior class.
Diego De La Hoya UD-8 Manuel Roman
A perfectly enjoyable fight, a solid win, and a nice step up for young De La Hoya (9-0, 6 KO), whose speed was the real difference maker against Roman (17-4-3, 6 KO). Roman did better here than he did against Leo Santa Cruz last September, but that’s because this was more his level, and even still he was outgunned against the 20-year-old De La Hoya, who put together some nice combinations, took a few decent shots in return, and got through this with flying colors. Scores were 80-72 across the board, the same as our unofficial card.
Taishan Dong UD-4 Roy McCrary
Listening to Brian Custer and Paulie Malignaggi shill this as some sort of meaningful fight was probably the highlight. From any technical standpoint, Taishan (3-0, 2 KO) is a miserably bad fighter, sort of Valuev-esque, but, like, worse. He’s probably got better mobility, but he has worse defensive skills. That’s a thing I thought — I thought about Nikolay Valuev’s “defensive skills” in 2015. Taishan has learned how to poke a jab and throw a right hand. McCrary (3-3, 2 KO) is a low-level club fighter, 42 and not in real boxing condition, but he came to fight at least, and seemed to have some plans for landing long shots around Taishan’s unreasonably slow attempts to block hooks. He clipped the big guy a couple times, but was dropped twice and lost on cards of 40-34, 40-34, and 40-35. BLH had it 40-34. Taishan is pure novelty at this point, and seems unlikely to ever be anything more.