09.08.07 – By Chris Williams: Cruiserweight Francisco Palacios (12-0, 6 KOs) stopped one-time title challenger Louis Azille (19-4-2, 15 KOs) in the 6th round of a scheduled eight round bout on Wednesday night at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, in Hollywood, Florida. Azille, 36, had been dominating the fight up to the sixth round, when he suddenly made the mistake of letting his guard down for a moment, allowing the relatively light-punching Palacio, 30, to tag him with a thunderous right uppercut followed closely by a left hook that sent Azille down on his back.
Soon after getting up, Palacio landed two scorching right hands that staggered the veteran Azille, prompting the referee Tommy Kimmons to stop the fight at 0:55 of the 6th round.
Palacio, a former Florida Golden Gloves champion who’s had a late start to his professional boxing career, was a last minute replacement for O’Neil Bell. Palacio figured to be a huge disadvantage against Azille due to the fact Palacio had previously faced much lesser opposition than Azille, who besides fighting for the WBC cruiserweight title against Waybe Braithwaite in April 2004 (a fight that Azille had lost by 12-round unanimous decision), he’d also fought tough cruiserweight opponents such as Kelvin Davis, Imamu Mayfield, Terry Porter, and Saul Montana. However, Azille had only fought once in the past four years, just recently returning to the boxing ring in February 2007, hence the reason why Palacio would have be put in the ring with such an experienced fighter like Azille.
Up until the sixth round, however, it appeared that Palacio’s people had made a mistake with putting him in there with Azille, mainly because Palacio was taking big shots by the hard-punching Azille, who was stalking him continuously from the opening bell. Palacio, for his part, spent much of the time moving around the ring constantly, and throwing fast punches, albeit with little power, that were blocked for the most part by Azille. With a pair of trunks – split on each side like the type that Hector “Macho” Camacho often wears – appearing to be a size too small for him, Palacio did little to distinguish himself aside from running and throwing punches with little power on them.
However, in the sixth round, Azille seemed to forget all about his defense in his haste to try and cut off the ring on Palacio, allowing his hands to drop for an instant, which was all it took for Palacio to land a quick left-right combination sending Azille to the canvas. In fairness to Azille, he had up to that point in the fight had been chasing an illusive target and not throwing anything resembling power in return. Once Azille made it up, Palacio finished him off quickly with two right hands that landed clean and causing the referee to step in and halt the bout due to Azille’s staggering after absorbing each right hand.