Mexican prospect Jaime Munguia skipped the contender stage and graduated directly to world titleholder status on HBO with an extremely dominant, four round beat down of Sadam Ali. A star may have been born in the ring tonight. Rey Vargas defended his super bantamweight belt over fun contender Azat Hovhannisyan in the enjoyable co-feature as well.
Jaime Munguia (29-0, 25 KOs) had a considerable size advantage in the ring tonight. That combined with the fact that he is a natural huge puncher was too much for Sadam Ali (26-2, 14 KOs) from the opening bell. Ali tried to do his thing and box in the first round, but a huge left hook put him down and hurt him badly by its midpoint. He rose and battled back, but his legs were shaky and he was down again after not too long. There was time left in the round and I thought the fight was over there. Ali moved enough to survive it though.
He got his legs back and boxed well for a big part of the second round, but right at the end of it he was caught and dropped yet again. Munguia was more patient in the third with his stalking, but he still landed damaging blows in an increasingly pointless fight. I thought the young Mexican scored yet another knockdown here as I saw Ali go down because of punches, but he managed to stagger and clinch long enough before going down that the referee ruled it a slip.
It was clear between rounds that veteran referee Gary Rosato wanted the fight stopped after the third. In fact, he briefly said he was stopping it. The corner protested to the doctor, however, and he ruled that Ali could continue despite Rosato clearly wanting it stopped. I wanted it stopped too. This was one of the stranger moments I have seen live. Ali did come out for the fourth, but one more big, dramatic, and completely unnecessary shot dropped him extremely hard and the fight was immediately waved off.
Jaime Munguia is now your WBO junior middleweight titleholder at 21 years old. I have been high on him for a while now, but I do want to caution the hype a little bit. Munguia is as big as a 154 lber can possibly be and won’t be able to make the weight long term as he ages. Sadam Ali is a notably small junior middleweight who belongs back down at welterweight. Munguia is a solid and exciting young fighter, but he might not quite be the monster he looked like here against men his own size. I will say that this belt change is great for the division though. Ali’s WBO title was always going to be held hostage over at Golden Boy, but with a Zanfer promoted fighter now holding it working with PBC to unify the belts is now possible.
Rey Vargas (32-0, 22 KOs) overcame a spirited performance from challenger Azat Hovhannisyan (14-3, 11 KOs) to retain his WBC super bantamweight title by decision in the opener. The Armenian challenger charged really hard in this fight and landed many significant shots, but he couldn’t overcome his physical and technical deficiencies when compared to the titleholder to win enough rounds to take the belt. Vargas was just significantly bigger and more able to throw fluid combinations. Azat should keep his head high though as he gave a great and entertaining effort in there. I scored it 116-112 for Vargas while the official cards came back 118-110, 117-111, and 116-112 for the same man.
