PBC’s Toe to Toe Tuesday on FS1 brought an all action, highly exciting featherweight main event featuring Miguel Flores returning from his first defeat to meet former title challenger Chris Avalos. The fight delivered in terms of excitement, but unfortunately a controversial ending mars it a bit. Hopefully we get a rematch sooner rather than later. PBC light heavyweight prospect Ahmed Elbiali was also in action.
First and foremost, Miguel Flores (21-2, 9 KOs) and Chris Avalos (27-5, 20 KOs) put on an excellent action fight in the main event. Unfortunate ending aside, this was a very simply a good fight. In the first round, Flores used his underrated, high volume boxing from range to clearly win the opening frame. Miguel has some Arturo Gatti in him, however, for better and for worse. Just like the legendary action fighter, when his opponent stepped up the pressure, Flores elected to war instead of continuing to box successfully.
Maybe it is not the best strategy for his world title dreams, but it is who Miguel Flores is. Chris Avalos took at advantage of this in the second round, landing exponentially more than he did in the first. His heavier shots seemed to carry the round. He did not win the third, however, as Flores really did some damage in the round, forcing a hurt Avalos to take a knee in the third’s final seconds. The fourth was continuing dominance from Flores, but at some point a cut was opened over Flores’s left eye.
There isn’t clear video of how the cut opens. Given the sequence that it does happen in, nothing really seems to occur at all to my eyes. Their heads did come close, so maybe they grazed and the cut was opened as commentator Sergio Mora was speculating. Even when the PBC crew tried to find an angle post-fight to find the source, there was nothing really clear even though they tried to sell it as an obvious headbutt.
Flores fought through an extremely action packed, give and take fifth with the cut. Both had their moments in what was really an outstanding round of boxing, but Flores was still overall getting the better of it. Unfortunately, what looked like a brewing fight of the year candidate ended prematurely after Flores showed clear physical discomfort in his corner as related to the cut. While blood wasn’t flowing at the time, it is difficult to blame the commission for stopping the contest given the pained faces Miguel Flores was making.
After some confusion, the referee could be heard proclaiming that he never saw a headbutt. I also didn’t see one, but it is not the right decision to assume it then came from a punch if you didn’t see that either. This should have been a no contest given the ambiguity of where exactly the injury came from. At worst, a technical decision could have been called for. A loss for Miguel Flores is an unacceptable outcome from what is available to see on video, but that is what we have.
There is a silver lining here though. The “wrong” fighter winning in controversial fashion over the house fighter has been a surefire recipe for a rematch since the beginning of boxing. In this case, Miguel Flores was the PBC, in house fighter who got wronged. Given how great of a fight it was shaping up to be, I have no complaints about more rounds of these two.
The opening fight of the show was a strange one too. In the end, unbeaten Egyptian light heavyweight prospect Ahmed Elbiali (16-0, 13 KOs) did score a strong second round knockout against the normally very game Christopher Brooker (12-4, 5 KOs), but it was an ugly two rounds to get there.
First, Christopher Brooker did not seem to come here to win. He spent the majority of the two rounds just trying to clinch even though he was landing when he did throw. The fight was marred by fouls, particularly shots behind the head from both fighters. Elbiali seemed to be leading that dance, but it was Brooker who was penalized when he finally started retaliating. The knockout was clean, though Brooker cried about shots to the back of the head afterward. This KO sequence was certainly the best Elbiali has looked on one of these PBC cards over a few moments, but he still hasn’t really impressed over the length of a fight yet.
After the main event, Ryan “Cowboy” Karl (14-1, 9 KOs) returned from his February loss to Eddie Ramirez against Nicaraguan journeyman Carlos Velasquez (24-30-2, 14 KOs). This was a mismatch never meant for the broadcast, but there was time to fill after the short two main fights. Karl won a shut out decision, but could not find the stoppage.
Off television, former unqualified heavyweight titleholder Charles Martin (25-1-1, 23 KOs) stopped club level heavyweight Michael Marrone (21-8, 15 KOs) and former world title challenger Edwin Rodriguez (29-2, 20 KOs) stopped his own club fighter in Melvin Russell (10-2-2, 6 KOs).
