By Rey Anthony: Hollywood, FL, USA – An exciting showdown between two super bantamweights took place at the Westin Diplomat resort Saturday evening January 7, 2012. Jose Luis “Tapitas” Araiza (29-5-1 20KO) went up against Jose Rojas (18-1-1 13KO) in a scheduled 8 round contest televised on Telemundo.
Rojas, who won his 5 previous fights since his comeback in June of 2010, three of which via KO was the clear favorite to win against Araiza who lost four straight fights prior to this one.
The opening round started with Rojas effectively throwing his punches from the outside in different angles. Being the taller fighter with a longer reach, he was able to keep his distance from Araiza who struggled to connect his punches because of Rojas’ effective blocking. It was this opening round when Araiza showed his major weakness of dropping his left hand when throwing his power punches.
However, at the beginning of the 2nd round Araiza started to show major improvement when he became more aggressive. He landed a lot of his jabs, hooks and body shots. But due to Araiza’s bad habit of dropping his guard, Rojas was still able to land his shots. Although he was able to block the vicious body shots thrown by his opponent at him, this was the last round of the fight when Rojas’ defense worked efficiently. Araiza’s hard work made him the clear winner of this round.
The next couple of rounds showed Araiza being the stronger puncher. Rojas’ took a lot of punishment from him. Plus Araiza’s defense started showing up. He bobbed and weaved and blocked the punches coming from Rojas who can’t seem to find his striking distance. He threw a lot of punches but most of them failed to find the target.
Puerto Rican born Rojas seemed to have found his comeback opportunity during the fourth round. He was able to connect solid quality punches and was also able to press his opponent against the ropes a couple of times. Araiza managed to survive the round by sticking to the combo that he used through the night. Jab, straight to the body then side step.
A low blow warning was given to Rojas during the 5th round. The 6th and 7th round seemed to be the pivotal rounds of the fight. Rojas started looking slow and tired. His defense got weak. Araiza was able to exploit that weak defense by connecting his hard solid punches and connecting them solidly to Rojas’ body and temple.
The two pugilists gave all their best during the final round. Rojas’ was able to use his opponent’s bad defense connecting his jabs and power punches. But Araiza stuck to his fight plan. He did not give up and he fought back. He was able to land a 5 punch combo on Rojas’ swollen face in the middle of the ring. He looked like he did enough to seal the upset of the night.
Unfortunately, for the three judges scoring at ring side, the fight ended up in a majority draw. Only one judge scored the fight in Araiza’s favor. The crowd in attendance booed in disagreement over the decision. Although the Mexican born Araiza is 7 years older than his opponent, from the eyes of the spectators, he did enough to hand his opponent a boxing lesson.