Naoya Inoue (30-0, 27 KOs) held onto his undisputed super bantamweight championship in a drama-filled fight, stopping challenger Ramon Cardenas (26-2, 14 KOs) with an eighth-round TKO on Sunday night at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
Cardenas showed power that fans didn’t know existed tonight, dropping Inoue with a booming left hook to the jaw in round two. In the third, he came close to knocking Inoue down a second time when he nailed him with another left to the head that caused the Japanese star to stumble backward.
Inoue got himself together and took control of the fight with his jab and right-hand shots. He did an excellent job of getting out of the way of Cardenas’ attempts to land his homerun left hook shots, but not all of them. Ocassionally, he was still able to land but without the same effect.
In the seventh, Inoue dropped Cardenas after hitting him four consecutive times with right hands. Cardenas barely made it out of the round after a follow-up flurry from Naoya. At the start of the eighth, Inoue teed off on the punch-drunk-looking Cardenas, resulting in referee Thomas Taylor waving it off. The time was at 0:45 of the round.
Rafael Espinoza (27-0, 23 KOs) bludgeoned the overmatched challenger Edward Vazquez (17-3, 4 KOs) with sheer volume, stopping him in the seventh round to retain his WBO featherweight title on Sunday night at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. Vazquez fought bravely, taking a lot of punches from the lanky 6’1″ Espinoza.
Late in rounds three, four, and five, Vazquez was hurt by body shots from Rafael. He barely made it out of the fifth round, as he’d been trapped in the final seconds and was taking terrible punishment from Espinoza. After the round, referee Harvey Dock warned Vazquez, saying, “You got to show me something.”
Espinoza took the sixth round off, choosing not to continue his assault. However, in the seventh, he attacked Vazquez with a body shot that caused him to retreat to the ropes. Espinoza then unloaded a flurry of combinations, leaving the referee, Harvey Dock, with no choice but to stop the contest. The time was at 1:47 of the round.
Rohan Polanco (16-0, 10 KOs) dominated Fabian Andres Maidana (24-4, 18 KOs), winning a wide 10-round unanimous decision in welterweight action. The unbeaten 147-lb contender Polanco, 26, knocked Maidana down with a body shot in the tenth and final round. He landed a perfectly placed right to the solar plexus of Fabian to send him down on the canvas in the last 30 seconds of the round. Maidana got up and bravely weathered the storm of punches from Polanco in the closing seconds to escape on his feet. The scores were 100-89, 100-89, and 100-89.
Emiliano Vargas (14-0, 12 KOs) scored a second-round technical knockout of Juan Leon (11-3-1, 2 KOs) in light welterweight action. Vargas dropped Leon twice with powerful left hooks. The contest was stopped at 1:40 of round two. In round two, Emiliano, 21, landed a right-left combination that put Leon down for the first knockdown. When the action resumed, Vargas backed Leon up near the ropes and hit him with a right and then a left uppercut that dropped him for the second time. Referee Robert Hoyle waved it off at this point.
