Lightweight Juan Manuel Marquez (50-4-1, 37 KOs) scored a spectacular ninth round KO over Juan Diaz (34-2, 17 KOs) to claim the vacant WBA super and WBO lightweight titles, as well as Diaz’ IBO belt on Saturday night at the Toyota Center in Houston. It was a fierce all out war in which Marquez absorbed Diaz’ heavy pressure early, then broke down the “Baby Bull,” dropping him twice in the ninth. Time was 2:40. A definite fight of the year candidate.
In his tenth defense of his WBA featherweight title and first fight in the USA, unbeaten world featherweight champion Chris John (42-0-2, 22 KOs) and Rocky Juarez (28-4-1, 20 KOs) battled to a hard-fought twelve round draw. John mostly outworked a determined Juarez, although Rocky landed the harder punches. John cut Juarez over the left eye in round five and threw more than 100 punches in most rounds, while Juarez closed strong winning the last round on all cards. All three judges scored it 114-114, thus John retains the title. John originally won the belt from Osamu Sato in Tokyo back in 2004. “I thought I won the fight easy,” said John. “I dominated the fight. He was a tough fighter but what can I say?” Rocky stated “I thought I won the fight. I gave up the middle rounds. I lost some of them, but it was a great show. I wanted to win the title in front my hometown fans. I got cut but it had nothing to do with it. I came out in the later rounds and thought I took the fight. He fought a good smart fight but was my fault.”
All Photos by AP
HBO2 will replay this great fight tomorrow Tuesday March 3rd @ 8:30 PM
While watching I was thinking “this is the reason why I love boxing”
What an amazing fight. I was lucky enough to watch it live at the Toyota Center! 🙂
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