(Carlos Molina, left, Ishe Smith, right; photo credit: Tom Hogan, Golden Boy)
These are the results for the two main undercard fights to support the main event of Floyd Mayweather and Saul Alvarez and Lucas Matthysse vs. Danny Garcia:
Pablo Cesar Cano knocked off Ashley Theophane by split decision, with one judge somehow scoring it 96-94 for Theophane and the other two judges scoring it 98-92 and 97-93 for Cano in the welterweight bout. Hopes that this might be an exciting welterwieght bout devoid of significance fell short on both significance and excitement. Cano deserved to win, though, having bloodied Theophane and outworking and outpunching him in most rounds. What does he do next, I cannot say. He is good enough to challenge contenders and beat semi-contenders, but little more.
Junior middleweight Carlos Molina also took a split decision victory where one judge had it all wrong, 116-112 for Ishe Smith, with the other two 117-111 and 116-112 for Molina. It was, indeed, a difficult fight to score, but not a fight that Smith won eight rounds of, anyway. It was a little ugly, unsurprisingly, given the rugged style of Molina and conservative style of Smith, but mostly Molina was landing the more meaningful blows, and after six rounds Smith really slowed down. Molina moves on to… I don't know. His commercial appeal is negligible, but maybe now that he's got a belt he'll get some fight or the other.
