Danny Garcia picked up a ninth round stoppage win over Brandon Rios tonight on Premier Boxing Champion’s thanks to a pretty spectacular giant right hand. 21 year old WBC titleholder David Benavidez and welterweight contender Yordenis Ugas also won on the card’s earlier bouts.
Danny Garcia (33-1, 20 KOs) scored an impressive and largely out of no where ninth round stoppage over a very game Brandon Rios (34-4-1, 25 KOs) in the show’s main event. The finish came on a pretty giant right hand that I just didn’t see coming. The fight was fairly entertaining with Brandon Rios charging forward with Garcia looking to pick him off in combination. Mostly it was the latter, but Brandon surprised me with how intense his pressure and with what he was able to land.
Still, he didn’t do enough to win the rounds at any real clip. Not that it would have matted had Rios pocketed many though. In the ninth round, he tossed out a jab that he brought back low and lazily. Danny Garcia instantly capitalized with a monstrous and perfectly placed right hand. Suddenly gravity was having a huge effect on Rios as he collapsed to the canvas. This was a really great shot. Rios rose, but he was on shaky legs and the fight was rightfully stopped.
Garcia needed this win to make his case for the Thurman rematch, but the real story here was Brandon Rios for me. Yeah, sure he got knocked out, but he showed that he does have at least something for him to give at welterweight. This was a solid perfomance.
In the co-main event, young WBC super middleweight titleholder David Benavidez (20-0, 17 KOs) proved his point in his rematch with Romanian contender Ronald Gavril (18-3, 14 KOs). Their first fight in September was unexpectedly one of the better fights in 2017. On paper the matchup looked like an easy way for PBC to put a middleweight belt on their rising young star, but Ronald Gavril was having none of that. He dropped his 21 year old opponent in the twelfth and had a real case to win the decision.
Ronald Gavril had no such argument in this rematch. In fact, I only scored a single round for him. Benavidez appeared to be in much better shape. He used his improved conditioning to stay consistent for all twelve rounds behind his jab and combination punching. This fight was more and more a beating as it went on as the younger man continually asserted his dominance. It didn’t come without a cost, however, as Benavidez showed off some visible damage to his hand post-fight.
Yordenis Ugas (21-3, 10 KOs) continued his improbable ascent up the welterweight rankings with a seventh round stoppage win over “The New” Ray Robinson (24-3, 12 KOs). As a former Olympic medalist as a member of the legendary Cuban national team, expectations were high for Ugas when he defected and turned pro in 2010. Things did not go as planned, however. Yordenis lost three fights before stepping up to world level and was largely considered a busted prospect. After taking two years off from 2014 to 2016, Ugas has rebounded spectacularly with six straight wins under the PBC banner against pretty good competition.
In this fight the Cuban won pretty much every round, dropping his Philadelphia foe in the first and seventh rounds. His straight right landed time and time again. Robinson was in the fight and competitive, but he didn’t do enough to win any rounds in my view. He did drop Ugas once, but it was during an exchange after the bell that lost him a point following the fourth round. The fight’s finishing sequence started on a right hand that can only be described as chopping. It landed as Robinson was hunched over and he fell hard. He got up, but Ugas swarmed with nonstop action to force the referee’s hand in stopping the fight.
With the win, Yordenis Ugas becomes the IBF mandatory challenger to Errol Spence Jr’s welterweight belt. I don’t think the Cuban can possibly win that fight, but he will get his chance at becoming a world champion later this year in all likelihood.
