Nick Ball (21-0-1, 12 KOs) retained his WBA featherweight title with a tenth-round knockout win over #7 ranked Ronny Rios (34-5-1, 17 KOs) on Saturday night at the M&S Bank Arena in Liverpool, England.
In his first defense of his WBA 126-lb title, Ball knocked the 34-year-old Rios out of the ring in the tenth round. Rios’ corner then had the fight halted as he was being helped back into the ring by the referee. The time of the stoppage was at 2:06 in the tenth.
To get the knockout, Ball hit Rios with a rabbit punch to stun him, then shoved him hard to force him against the ropes, and then unloaded with a storm of punches to drive him outside of the ring.
Rios Took a Beating in 10th
Ball had shoved the badly fatigued Rios to the corner, then clipped with a beautiful right-hand rabbit punch to the back of the head, and then unloaded with a barrage of punches to knock him out of the ring.
When Rios got back into the ring, it was clear that he was in no shape to continue fighting. He was hurt and tired. Immediately after the fight, Rios left the ring, which is understandable because he’d taken a bad beating.
Rios was dropped in the third and the seventh round by Ball. The knockdown in the seventh was actual push, but the referee blew the call. It was surprising that Rios made it out of the third round because he took a shellacking from Ball.
Rios got his pound of flesh in the fight, bloodying Ball’s nose in the third round, marking up his right eye, and landing a lot of hard body shots. More than once, Ball looked hurt from the hard punches to the midsection that Rios had hit him with in the contest. Rios showed that Ball has a vulnerability to taking body shots.
Rios came back in the fourth and fifth to get the better of Ball with jabs to his bloody nose and shots to the midsection. Ball continued to fight hard, but he wasn’t as effective in those rounds.
Ball fought well in the sixth, crowding Rios, landing uppercuts, many rabbit punches, and hooks to the head. He did a lot of shoving and shouldering of Rios, which obviously he should have been warned for. Ball is a roughhouse fighter, so rabbit punches, shoving, and other niceties are part of his tools of the trade.
It was a good performance from the 34-year-old Ronny Rios, who was brought in a voluntary defense for Ball. He was picked from the #7 spot, and obviously for Ball to shine, but he gave him a lot of trouble.
This was a harder fight for Ball than his recent ones against Raymond Ford and Rey Vargas. Ball didn’t take anywhere near the same kind of punishment in those two fights as he did tonight against Rios, who showed that he could punch. If Rios had let his hands go more, Ball would have been in trouble tonight because he was bothered by his body punching, and his nose was gone after the third. You could tell that the headshots bothered Ball because of his badly bleeding nose.
Ball’s Fouling Was out of Hand
The referee could have done a better job policing Nick Ball’s rabbit punches, shoving and shouldering tonight because it was blatant. It was constant. The rabbit shots were like rain from Ball was it was shocking that the referee didn’t stop the action to give a warning or take off points.
Ball’s expertise with the illegal rabbit shots was splendid, but he shouldn’t have been allowed to use this tactic throughout the contest. If Rios had gotten in the mud with Ball and started throwing similar shots, it would have been interesting to see what the referee would have done.
“He’s a tough man, and he came back,” said Nick Ball to TNT Sports after the fight. “My Nose always goes. You’re going to get a little bit of a nosebleed, but that’s what makes a champion. I bounced back.”
Read the full article here
