We saw this coming: Ex-contender Luis Collazo heading up any televised card wasn't likely to produce a meaningful outcome, or a thrill a minute. And his win over Alan Sanchez Monday on Fox Sports went exactly as foretold. Despite what the fawning Fox Sports 1 commentary team of Paulie Malignaggi and Castle Chalice (the real name he goes by!) was telling us about Collazo again becoming a contender or the "great show" in San Antonio, none of it was true.
Some people liked Sanchez's chances coming in, part of which was about seeing something in him and part of which was Collazo being a 32-year-old still rebounding from a loss to Freddy Hernandez. Malignaggi found the loss defensible given that Collazo suffered a torn labrum; having not seen the fight, I can't say one way or the other. It's a bad-looking loss on his record, though, certainly worse than losing to Shane Mosley or Ricky Hatton or Andre Berto. Here's what he looked like to me after tonight: A "name" at welterweight who's back in the win column against two of three opponents who weren't pushovers, which includes Sanchez. Sanchez won two of the first four rounds on my card, mostly when he would throw a bunch of right crosses in a row or just generally stay busy. He couldn't keep it up for sufficient stretches to counter Collazo's body work, left hands, ring generalship and defense. I scored it 97-93 after giving Sanchez the 10th, like one judge had it and unlike two others who had it wider — 99-91 and 98-92. Collazo's name ought to get him another fight, and his style is tricky enough to throw an up-and-comer or rehabbing vet some trouble. His style can mesh well with particularly aggressive fighters, which wasn't the type he was facing Monday, so in that sense he didn't exactly help his case for a much bigger bout.
Bantamweight and ex-Olympian Rau'shee Warren scored four knockdowns against Omar Gonzalez but couldn't keep him down in a slight step up in Warren's competition, seeing as how Gonzalez had recently beaten ex-contender Raul Martinez. Warren has hand speed that puts him among the elite pros, and is showing more power than he did as an amateur, but the tradeoff is that he has become more hittable, which is something he'll have to fix going forward or he'll get knocked out. As for Martinez, he kicked off the show with some slugging against Daniel Quevedo, not that it was enough to make up for Martinez looking pretty faded or the non-action elsewhere on the card. He got the win after Quevedo quit in his corner for a 4th round stoppage.
