Running updates coming at you on the undercard results for Pacquiao vs. Marquez 3. Two decent bouts — Luis Cruz vs. Juan Carlos Burgos and Mike Alvarado vs. Breidis Prescott — and one ugly one — Timothy Bradley vs. Joel Casamayor — that could set up a future Pacquiao opponent, should Bradley come out ahead. After each fight, we’ll post the results, then move on later to the main event.
We have an upset to start the evening. Juan Carlos Burgos took out top-10 junior lightweight and well-hyped fighter (including in these quarters) Luis Cruz in a very close bout that he won by majority decision. Burgos did very well early, landing counter lefts at will and controlling the distance, but Cruz adjusted and began to find the range against an opponent who wasn’t as slow as I expected. Even as Burgos began to slow, he began throwing different looks at Burgos, fighting going backward rather than forward. I scored it 96-94 for Burgos, and one judge had it 95-95, but the other two had it a bit wider, 97-93 and 98-92. It’s the best win of Burgos’ career, and a setback for Cruz, who needs to work on his defense because he got tagged backing straight up far too often.
Mike Alvarado had a pretty dramatic comeback win against Breidis Prescott to stop it in the 10th. He was getting dominated and outworked early, but began putting on the pressure, and Prescott began slowing down. Slowly, slowly, Alvarado began to catch up to Prescott, despite wounds bleeding from his whole face — nose, left eye, mouth, including a gash on his mouth that made it look like someone knifed the corner of his lip. In the 10th, Alvarado delivered a crushing series of uppercuts that put down Prescott, who somehow rose only to get battered by an even worse series of uppercuts and forcing the referee to stop the bout. Alvarado and Prescott are both TV-ready, if nothing more, and you can’t not like the grit Alvarado showed to comeback and win that one. (The ref’s stoppage COULD be questioned, but I don’t question it — Prescott was in rough shape.)
The absolute mismatch that was Timothy Bradley-Joel Casmayor proved to be just that, although the head buttfest never quite surfaced. In Round 8 Casamayor’s trainer stepped in and stopped it after a series of knockdowns and point deductions and such. This proved nothing, and did nothing to elevate Bradley, although I for one was impressed by the ruthlessness of his body attack. From a competitive standpoint, Bradley is among the top potential future Pacquiao opponents — despite getting more static from Casa than he should’ve and missing more shots than he should’ve — but from a style standpoint he’s as awkward and rough and unappealing as they get. When “less ugly than I expected” is one’s conclusion about what happened, things ain’t so hot.
