It is once again that time of the week for Under the Radar Fight Results. This is where I collect all the prominent results of the week that I had not already discussed separately and break them down. This week might have been the slowest of the year so far, but it still brought us a Cotto, a Chavez, Yuriorkis Gamboa, a Cuban heavyweight, and more.
Thursday, August 10th
Charles Huerta (20-5, 12 KOs) TD8 Miguel Angel Gonzalez (21-3, 18 KOs), junior lightweights – California
Charles Huerta is a Golden Boy regional level fighter who they like to feature on their smallest, Estrella TV broadcast LA Fight Club series. There was a time when Huerta was a minor, but notable prospect. That time is now far gone, however. Still, last time out, Huerta scored an upset stoppage of another minor prospect and here edged a close decision, albeit over essentially a high level Mexican club fighter. He has some minor momentum and remains in Golden Boy’s good graces, so it wouldn’t be too shocking to see Huerta pop up against someone on say their mid level ESPN series. The technical decision here was prompted when a cut on Huerta’s head caused by an accidental headbutt was deemed to serious for him to continue.
Keita Obara (18-2-1, 16 KOs) TKO2 Narong Boonchan (26-3, 21 KOs), welterweights – Japan
In September of last year, Keita Obara traveled to Moscow to fight for Eduard Troyanovsky’s IBF belt. The Russian’s considerable punching power proved too much for him, however, and he was stopped in the second round. It will take a lot for Obara to get back to world title contention given how quickly he was wiped away there, but he remains arguably Japan’s top active welterweight. Here he took one step closer by winning a minor WBO belt. Thailand’s Narong Boonchan brought a predictable empty record to this pugilistic dance.
Friday, August 11th
Robert Alfonso (13-0, 5 KOs) UD10 Jason Bergman (26-15-2, 17 KOs), heavyweights – Alabama
Robert Alfonso’s quiet existence in the fight world is a bit odd. A former Cuban super heavyweight Olympian, his defection and subsequent start of his professional career in 2012 received basically no coverage from the boxing media. All has been quiet since then too. This is in part because Alfonso lost his first fight in the 2008 Olympics to Vyacheslav Glazkov, sure, but he also holds amateur wins over Andy Ruiz Jr and Michael Hunter. Unfortunately, the lack of hype might actually be befitting of his potential though. Alfonso’s technical skills are predictably on point as a product of the Cuban amateur system, but he is a low volume puncher with basically no power on his shots whatsoever. It is difficult picturing him winning on the world level at heavyweight. For now his largest role in the sport is as an important Deontay Wilder sparring partner.
Saturday, August 12th
Yamaguchi Falcao (14-0, 7 KOs) TKO4 Taronze Washington (17-24, 9 KOs), middleweights – Florida
I don’t know why this fight happened. Golden Boy promoted Yamaguchi Falcao won bronze in London for his native Brazil. Last time out in May, Falcao received his biggest exposure by routing unbeaten Morgan Fitch on ESPN2. Here he came back against a fighter with a losing record on a nothing show in Tampa. Yamaguchi and his Top Rank promoted younger brother Esquiva Falcao, a silver medalist in London, are both campaigning as serious middleweight prospects in the sport right now. For Brazil, these two plus Robson Conceicao mark a bright bit of hope for a country that otherwise doesn’t usually have a ton of interest in the sport.
Cesar Seda (28-3, 18 KOs) UD8 Rogelio Casarez (13-6, 5 KOs), lightweights – Florida
Former two time title challenger Cesar Seda returned as Falcao’s chief support in Tampa. In 2011, he lost a super flyweight shot against Omar Andres Narvaez and a super bantamweight shot at Leo Santa Cruz two years later in 2013. In both cases, all three judges gave him at least a few rounds, but in neither case was he close to winning the fight. Seda’s third loss came in 2015 via majority decision against Cesar Juarez. All this is to say that basically Seda is a pretty good fighter, but he isn’t going to be likely to win on world level. This is the level he thrives on.
Abner Cotto (22-3, 11 KOs) TKO1 Jorge Rodriguez (10-1, 10 KOs), junior welterweights – Puerto Rico
Abner Cotto is the cousin of Miguel Cotto. Once upon a time, he was considered a serious prospect in the sport too. In fact, a lot of the original hype surrounding Omar Figueroa Jr came when Figueroa blew out Cotto in one when they were both undefeated prospects back in 2013. Cotto lost a reasonably competitive decision to Francisco Vargas in 2014, but then he was stopped in five against Javier Fortuna later that same year. With those three losses, his fate was sealed as far from a top fighter. He is 4-0 since then, though two of those wins are KO1s against the very same Puerto Rican club fighter. At 30, there is time for another run, but it seems unlikely to end all that well for him.
Francisco Rodriguez Jr (24-4-1, 16 KOs) KO7 Elias Joaquino (11-1-1, 6 KOs), super flyweights – Mexico
The rarest of breeds, Francisco Rodriguez Jr is a former unified minimumweight titleholder. He failed in his two big bids at junior flyweight though, first in a title shot against Donnie Nietes and then in a matchup of top contenders against Moises Fuentes. The Fuentes fight was a toss up decision that could have gone either way, however. Since then Rodriguez has moved to full flyweight where he remains a top contender. I have him ranked sixth in the division. He is due for a bigger fight than this, but here he at least stopped a previously undefeated fighter. With talent congregating both below at junior flyweight and especially above at the absolutely loaded super flyweight limit, plain old flyweight is a wide open division. Rodriguez is plenty good enough to keep at world level against this field.
Yuriorkis Gamboa (27-2, 17 KOs) MD10 Alexis Reyes (15-3-1, 7 KOs), lightweights – Mexico
Yuriorkis Gamboa is done as a top fighter. That probably should have been obvious after the Castellanos defeat, but given that Robinson Castellanos also fought really well against Jezreel Corrales, I was willing to consider the idea that Castellanos was just way better than we realized. Thought Gamboa controlled this fight pretty well overall, he didn’t show anything to make that any different.
Gamboa started this fight really well, sweeping the first three rounds and looking pretty sharp doing it. Reyes rallied a bit in the fourth, arguably scoring a classic Gamboa off balance knockdown, but he didn’t get the call. It was nothing to be upset about as it wasn’t super clear, but this would have been a draw had it been called. From there, things got weird. Gamboa lost three points along the way. One in the fifth for basically throwing Reyes, one in the eighth for leading with his head, and one in the ninth for clearly hitting on the break. The Cuban former star also got really tired, losing the seventh and eighth rounds while looking like he might be on the verge of a major collapse. He rallied well in the last two though, leading us to this confusing decision.
The scores came back 95-94 Gamboa times two and then one even 94-94 card. Someone help me with the math here. Gamboa lost three points, therefore they gave him eight rounds for that 95 score to make sense. But how does Reyes then end up with 94? The judges got really creative with even rounds in this one. For the record, I scored it 7-3 Gamboa, which is 94-93 in his favor after the deductions. I have no issue with the end result, but the math is just kind of odd. I guess in the rounds that Gamboa won and lost points, the fifth and the ninth, they must have scored 10-10.
Roberto Garcia (41-3, 24 KOs) UD10 Omar Chavez (36-4, 24 KOs), middleweights – Mexico
Speaking of odd, Omar Chavez for some reason largely chose to copy his brother’s tactics against Canelo Alvarez by not fighting for large stretches of this bout, destroying the unexpected bit of career momentum he had built in the process. Omar was 8-1 since 2012 with okay wins over Joachim Alcine and Daniel Sandoval. The one loss was a decision to Ramon Alvarez, Canelo’s brother, which he avenged emphatically last time out with a second round stoppage. This isn’t world level stuff, but Omar Chavez had more or less risen to the rank of a strong domestic level Mexican fighter. Few had predicted even that much for him. All this and he is still only 27 years old too.
Now it is all gone. Roberto Garcia is no better than the level Chavez had been winning at. Yet, after two rounds of body work, Chavez was done. He could barely muster up any offense and largely just moved around the ring doing nothing while looking completely spent. In the fourth Chavez managed to punch and badly hurt Garcia, but that took all his energy as his follow up was so weak as to be somewhat concerning. He looked potentially sick or something out there. That is it. I gave Chavez the first and the fourth rounds. Garcia just had to put in a pretty casual performance to get this win. It was there by default. This was just a baffling display yet again by a son of Julio Cesar Chavez.
Azizbek Abdugofurov (7-0, 4 KOs) UD8 Jackson Malinyingi (8-3, 2 KOs), middleweights – Malaysia
25 year old Uzbek middleweight Adbugofurov is a pretty well known prospect. He had an extensive amateur career and was a favorite to win the 2013 world championships. A cut knocked him out in the quarterfinals, unfortunately. He is billed as a puncher, but his last three opponents have gone the distance. Granted, he is facing decent competition for this early in his career, so that may temper the knockout ratio. I don’t think his overall game is good enough to get him to high world level, but he is an aggressive, open fighter who will be at worst an entertaining action fighter sort of in the Avni Yildirim mold.
