In card filled with two terrible mismatches, WBA Super World featherweight champion Leo Santa Cruz (34-1-1, 19 KOs) defeated his voluntary challenger/fringe contender Chris Avalos (27-6, 20 KOs) by an 8th round knockout on Saturday night in a fight televised by Premier Boxing Champions on Fox from the StubHub Center in Carson, California.
Santa Cruz was hitting Avalos at will in round 8 when the fight was halted by the referee Thomas Taylor. The official time of the stoppage was at 1:34 of the round.
Avalos was hurt in round 4 after taking a series of shots from Santa Cruz. In rounds 1 though 3, Santa Cruz hit the smaller and weaker Avalos big shots. Avalos previously fought in the super bantamweight division. He needs to be fighting in that weight class because he doesn’t have the talent or the power for the 126lb division.
The fight was so one-sided that was barely worth watching. The idea was for Santa Cruz to shine against a bottom feeder level opponent so that the boxing fans would get excited at seeing him matched against Abner Mares in early next year. The problem was Avalos was so bad that the fight was boring to watch because it wasn’t competitive.
Hopefully, Santa Cruz and Mares put on a better show in early 2018 than what the boxing fans saw tonight in their respective mismatches against weak opposition.
In the co-feature, WBA World featherweight champion Abner Mares (31-2-1, 15 KOs) defeated Andres Gutierrez (35-2-1, 25 KOs) by a 10 round technical decision. The fight was halted due to Gutierrez having as cut left eye.
The scores were 100-90, 99-91, and 99-91.
Mares, 31, used his superior boxing skills to out-land and dominate the 24-year-old Gutierrez in a mismatch that was almost as ugly as the main event fight between Santa Cruz and Avalos. It didn’t help that Gutierrez came into the fight having recently been beaten by 36-year-old Cristian Mijares. Gutierrez wasn’t talented enough to make a fight of it and the fight turned into a real bore.
