We’ll keep updating this Saturday night Fox Pay-Per-View undercard here in the fashion of the times, chronologically but in reverse.
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The quick knockout trend lasted right until the penultimate bout of the evening, with super middleweight David Benavidez stopping journeyman J’Leon Love in two rounds. It continued the trend as well of guys who failed drug tests, after the Luis Nery vs McJoe Arroyo bout. Benavidez, like Nery, is still hard not to be excited about despite that unsavory incident, which was cocaine-related rather than overlapping with something performance enhancing. Benavidez has serious power, quickish hands, length and skill and when he closed on Love after a big right hand had him slumping against the ropes, there was little choice but to stop it right then and there. He called out Anthony Dirrell afterwards, but Benavidez’s destiny probably lies northward of that talent-wise.
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Hey, they had to air a swing bout. It was fine because it broke up the monotony of this atrocious broadcast of how great Jerry Jones is, punctuated by fights. And of course it was a mismatch. Junior welterweight Lindolfo Delgado and James Roach both had nothing but knockout wins on their record, yet the giant-sized Delgado easily dispensed with Roach. The first knockdown he was clearly hurt, then there was absolutely no way Roach was getting up from that left hook to the body. Best not to think about this one much.
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Ultra-talented bantamweight Luis Nery made mincemeat of McJoe Arroyo, spilling him all over the ring over four rounds before the corner stopped it. It went four rounds, four knockdowns. McJoe is the lesser of the Arroyo brothers, but he’s not an easy out historically because he can box and survive. Nery halted him for the first time and never really was in it for even a few seconds. He dropped him the first time in the 2nd with a short little uppercut that looked so simple but landed quick and flush. Nery is truly one of the talents in the sport right now, as a sharp boxer with real power. He’s got some blemishes with a bad drug test and coming in overweight, but he’s so good it’s hard not to be excited about him anyway. He’s one of the top two men in the division with Naoya Inoue, a match-up that would establish a new true champion and is one of those bouts truly worth drooling about. Please, don’t let Nery’s lifetime ban in Japan get in the way.
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Heavyweight Chris Arreola scored a knockout in the 3rd round of the unappetizing opener, stopping Jean Pierre Augustin as he flopped about with no purpose. Between holding and falling down for no reason, Augustin managed to bloody Arreola’s eminently bloodyable nose, but otherwise Arreola was in control. He staggered Arreola with a jab in the 3rd, then dropped him with a combo whereupon the referee counted to eight, asked him to walk forward, asked him to walk left, asked him to walk forward again and just to be sure, asked him for a few more minutes whether he wanted to continue. Arreola still stopped him shortly thereafter with another combo. Joe Goossen hailed Arreola as “back,” a demonstration of the caliber of commentary we’re getting with this crew. It would, however, be nice to see him against Charles Martin — Lennox Lewis’s suggestion — whose uncoordinated ass was fun on the non-PPV undercard.
