Mike Alvarado (34-3, 23 KO’s) did a brilliant job of showing how not to fight Juan Manuel Marquez (56-7-1, 40 KO’s) in losing a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision at the Forum, in Inglewood, California, USA. Alvarado, 33, decided to box Marquez for 12 rounds instead of using his superior size to try and score a knockout, and it cost Alvarado with him losing by the lopsided scores of 117-109, 117-109 and 119-109.
Alvarado was knocked down by a scorching right hand from Marquez in the 8th. It was the identical shot that Marquez used to knock Manny Pacquiao out cold in the 6th round of their fight in 2012. The different here is that Marquez didn’t have the muscles that he had then.
Marquez hit the deck in the 9th round after getting hit with a right hand from Alvarado. Marquez got a little overanxious in trying to finish Alvarado off and he left his guard down long enough for Alvarado to tag him with a big right.
Alvarado suffered a cut under his left eye late in the fight, but the cut wasn’t a factor in the fight. It was more of a nuisance than anything. Alvarado’s real problem was that he didn’t have the hand speed or the boxing skills to be fighting the kind of fight that he used. Alvarado needed go out looking for a knockout from the 1st round, because that was the only chance that he had to win the fight, but instead he boxed Marquez.
The fight was a WBC welterweight title eliminator, and Marquez now has the option to fight WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao for a 5th fight, which their promoter Bob Arum wants to stage in Macao, China. Marquez wasn’t sure after the fight whether he’ll face Pacquiao next or not. He said he wants to think about it. It’s likely that Marquez will agree to fight Pacquiao because he wants a chance to try and win a 5th division world title, and Pacquiao is really the only option he has to fight for a title at that weight until Golden Boy Promotions and Top Rank start arranging fights between the two companies.
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In a really bad mismatch, #1 WBC light welterweight contender Viktor Postol (26-0, 11 KO’s) defeated #2 WBC Selcuk Aydin (26-3, 19 KO’s) by a 11th round knockout. Postol, who isn’t known for his punching power, knocked out Aydin with a storm of punches in the 11th round. The finishing punch was from a right hand. Aydin fell down on his back, and the referee jumped in to call a halt to the bout at 2:52 of the round.
This was not a good fight to put as the co-feature bout, and Top Rank clearly dropped the ball in putting this with the Marquez-Alvarado fight. The Aydin-Postol fight would have been better as an off TV bout, because it wasn’t worth watching. The boxing fans at ringside felt the same way as they booed continuously at how dull the fight was.
Postol had no power, but he was landing constantly with his weak shots. Each time Aydin would attempt to land, Postol would retreat backwards to get out of range of his shots. Postol, 5’11”, was helped by his big height advantage over the 5’7″ Aydin. Postol frequently would hold his left arm out in front of him to push Aydin away to keep him from getting close. The referee didn’t do much to stop Postol from doing this during the fight.
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Other boxing results on the card:
Diego Magdaleno UD 8 Oscar Bravo
Oscar Valdez RTD 7 Noel Echevarria
Brad Solomon UD 8 Armen Ovsepyan
Raul Hirales TKO 3 Ernesto Guerrero
Gabino Saez TKO 3 Felix Perez
Pedro Duran TKO 1 Dominic Coca
Edwin Solis TKO 6 Yuri Trogiianov
Cameron Krael of MD 4 Manuel Lopez
