Jessie Vargas finally won a clear decision instead of having to rely on Vegas judges to side with him, beating Antonio DeMarco over 12 bruising rounds Saturday night on the undercard of Manny Pacquiao vs. Chris Algieri.
He isn’t great, or even particularly good, and probably never will be, even having switched to Roy Jones, Jr. as his trainer. But he’s typically in action fights, at least. Both men were bloodied, thanks to some poor defense. The bout’s action was sporadic, yet not unfulfilling when it did heat up, as it did particularly in the 9th.
The fight was won on volume and DeMarco having worse defense than Vargas. Vargas has never landed more punches in a fight than he did against DeMarco, according to CompuBox. DeMarco just loves standing there, looking at his opponent, getting punched. Surely, DeMarco, as a solid puncher, is happier in a brawl.
In the rounds that were pure brawl, DeMarco won. When Vargas moved and kept his hands busy — particularly to the body — he won. As it turns out, that was more of them. The final scores was 116-112 across the board.
HBO’s broadcast team made much of the talk of Pacquiao fighting Vargas someday. This is probably more of the traditional Top Rank/Bob Arum move of “mention a shittier fighter’s name as a potential opponent with a top name” than a real thing. Let’s hope it’s that, anyway. Pacquiao-Vargas is even more embarrassing than Pacquiao-Algieri.
