Canelo Alvarez and Edgar Berlanga will meet tonight in the main event, live on DAZN PPV in Las Vegas, Nevada. The event starts at 8 pm ET/4 pm PT. Berlanga wants to make a name for himself by beating King Canelo and taking his spot on the throne.
Tonight’s live results will be provided below.
– Former WBA light Welterweight Rolando ‘Rolly’ Romero (16-2, 13 KOs) looked terrible, defeating Manuel Jaimes (16-2-1, 11 KOs) by a boring ten-round unanimous decision in a nearly unwatchable fight. Rolly spent much of the time clinching and retreating. The scores were 99-91, 99-91, and 99-91.
Rolly’s management chose well, picking Jaimes, who showed zero punching power and didn’t know how to deal with Romero’s excessive clinching throughout the ten-round fight. The referee should have penalized Rolly for the holding because it was extreme, and had an impact on the fight.
Jaimes’ management should have watched Rolly’s last fight against Isaac ‘Pitbull’ Cruz to figure out how to keep him from holding all night. Cruz was tagging Rolly with repeated short hooks while being held, eventually knocking him out last March.
If this is how Rolly Romero will be fighting from now on, he’s not going to do well because he’s very boring to watch and not worth putting in a main event.
– Former unified super bantamweight champion Stephen Fulton (22-1, 8 KOs) edged Carlos Castro (30-3, 14 KOs), winning a narrow 10-round split decision. The scores were 96-93, 95-94 for Fulton, and 95-94 for Castro.
Fulton was dropped in the fifth round by a right hand from Castro and barely made it through. In the eighth, Castrol stunned Fulton a second time with a right hand.
Fulton found a second wind in the final two rounds, finishing strong to win the ninth and tenth to seal the victory.
Despite winning, Fulton’s performance raises questions about whether his eighth-round knockout loss to Naoya Inoue in July 2023 in Tokyo, Japan, took something out of him because tonight’s fight was supposed to be a tune-up fight for him.
Fulton wasn’t supposed to be getting knocked down and hurt by a non-puncher like Castro. Needing to struggle to defeat Castro suggests that Fulton could have lingering effects from his KO loss to Inoue last year, and that’s going to crumble when he gets in with a high-level fighter at 122.
– Welterweight Ricardo Salas (20-2, 15 KOs) scored a surprising third-round knockout of the big-punching Roman Villa (26-3, 24 KOs) in a fight scheduled for ten rounds.
Villa had been dominating the contest with his hard shots in the first two rounds and looked like he was on his way to victory. However, in the third, Villa was caught with a hard right hand from Salas while unloading on him against the ropes.
Salas followed up with a left that dropped Villa hard on the canvas. Referee Mike Ortega counted out Villa. The time of the stoppage was at 2:06 of the third.
Villa’s loss was his second consecutive. In his previous fight on July 8th last year, he was knocked out in the tenth round by Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis.
In hindsight, Villa should have boxed Salas a little more before going for the kill, but that’s how he fights. Villa is a brawler and paid the price for that style tonight.
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If the Brooklyn, New York native can pull off an upset, fans will get their money’s worth for tonight’s $89.99 event on PPV.
On the undercard, Caleb Plant and Trevor McCumby will fight for the WBA interim super middleweight title. Former IBF 168-lb champion Plant (22-2, 13 KOs) is the favorite, but he’s failed repeatedly when stepping up against the big dogs, and he’s been inactive for long stretches since losing to Canelo three years ago.
McCumby could pull off a minor upset against Plant and dash his stubborn hopes of getting a rematch against Canelo.
The Top Undercard Fights
– Erislandy Lara vs. Danny Garcia
– Caleb Plant vs. Trevor McCumby
– Rolando ‘Rolly’ Romero vs. Manuel Jaimes
– Stephen Fulton vs. Carlos Castro
Event info
Event Time: 8:00 p.m. ET /4:00 p.m. PT and 1:00 a.m in the UK for Sunday morning.
The main event ringwalks are (approximately) at 11:00 p.m. ET /7:00 p.m. PT and 4:00 a.m. UK time.
