Another PBC presented Toe to Toe Tuesday on FS1 is in the books. In the main event, elite bantamweight Juan Carlos Payano cruised to a predictably routine win over little known Alexis Santiago. Any headlines to be had here were generated by the co-feature in which Ladarius Miller scored a mild upset over 2012 US Olympian Jamel Herring.
Juan Carlos Payano (19-1, 9 KOs) is a world class fighter. He is a two time Olympian, recently had a world title, and is clearly one of the four best bantamweights in the world. Alexis Santiago (21-5-1, 8 KOs) is none of those things. Even worse, he was coming off a loss to a worse fighter than Payano. Predictably, Payano had an easy time casually working while largely avoiding anything Santiago sent in return.
This wasn’t a sustained beating and Santiago’s size advantage helped save him from ever being really hurt, but on a round by round basis Payano was just able to win almost all of them with his superior skill set. The only round I found to give to Santiago was the fourth. There he landed a few good rights while doing some visible damage to his super Dominican opponent’s face, but otherwise this was all Juan Carlos Payano.
The co-featured fight of the evening started slow, but by the middle rounds it was a pretty good scrap. Ladarius Miller (14-1, 4 KOs) took the first two rounds to back up and analyze his more hyped opponent Jamel Herring (16-2, 9 KOs), but after that he largely controlled the action with straight lefts, right hooks, and the occasional body work. Herring tried to rally a bit in the tenth, but it was too little too late for the former marine and US Olympian.
For the 24 year old Ladarius Miller, this wins legitimizes him as a prospect going forward. For Herring, the news is worse. This second loss makes him the first member of the 2012 US Olympic team knocked completely out of contention. While Rau’Shee Warren, Michael Hunter, and Dominic Breazeale all have a loss as well, those all happened in title fights. While Herring’s first loss was forgivable in a title eliminator, this one is much less so.
