PHOENIX – Flexing a 10-fight card to close the year for a frenzied fight audience, Top Rank revealed the depth of its stable and a glimpse at its future main-event fighters.
The one who grabbed the attention as the roaring weekend throng filled Footprint Center to watch the preliminary bouts Saturday night was featherweight prospect Albert “Chop Chop” Gonzalez of Moreno Valley, Calif.
Muscular and energetic with a pleasing risk-for-reward fighting style, Gonzalez has become a favorite of trainer Robert Garcia at the cornerman’s stacked training compound in Riverside, Calif.
Tireless, committed and yearning to both win and entertain, Gonzalez, 22, was assigned sturdy Gerardo Antonio Perez of Argentina Saturday, a foe who had never touched the canvas and was willing to add theatrics like urging on the crowd with raised arms following the sequences he’d get punished by Gonzalez’s brutal offerings.
Gonzalez ultimately settled on the idea that Perez wasn’t going down, treating him like a punching bag with hard power punches to the head and body.
Judges awarded Gonzalez victory by wide scores of 80-72, 80-72 and 79-73 as his record improved to 12-0.
Gonzalez showcased the enthusiasm and assets to explain why he’s attracting fans, trading blows early with Perez 12-7-1 in order to deliver the crushing shots he prefers.
The pair smiled through their exchanges, but Perez’s grins subsided in the final rounds as head shots backed him and body blows fatigued him.
Gonzalez celebrated before the scorecards were read by jumping up opposite neutral corners as the fans longing to see more hollered in delight.
In other action preceding the co-main-event featherweight title rematch between champion Rafael Espinoza of Mexico and Cuba’s Robeisy Ramirez and the WBO super-featherweight title rematch between champion Emanuel Navarrete and former two-division champion Oscar Valdez, heavyweight Richard Torrez Jr. won by third-round technical knockout over an outmanned Isaac Munoz 18-2-1 of Mexico.
Torrez 12-0 (11 KOs) repeatedly found Munoz with open head and body shots, leaving the opponent red-faced, gasping and defenseless at the end, when referee Raul Caiz Jr. stopped the fight 59 seconds into the third.
Mexico’s Lindolfo Delgado closed the preliminary portion of the card with a fifth-round knockout of Jackson Marinez of the Dominican Republic.
Delgado 22-0 (15 KOs) started hurting Marinez with flush blows to the head in the third and fourth rounds, then dropped him with another head shot earlier in the fifth before the disabling body shot that prompted the stoppage at the 2:14 mark.
Earlier, recently highly ranked welterweight contender Giovani Santillan returned from his May knockout loss to new WBO champion Brian Norman Jnr. and unleashed a round-long beating on Fredrick Lawson that forced Lawson to submit to a TKO loss just after the first-round bell rang.
Santillan 33-1 (18 KOs) was relentless from the opening bell, hammering Lawson to the body with opposite-handed power punches before belting him to the jaw with a flush uppercut before adding a combination of head shots to badly daze the Ghana product.
Referee Chris Flores asked Lawson if he was OK to continue at round’s end and Lawson nodded no, leaving Flores to wave the fight over.
“He’s got a lot of heart, that kid (Santillan). I’m really happy for him. I just wanted to know he was OK,” after the Norman loss, Santillan manager David McWater told BoxingScene. “We want a big fight.”
McWater mentioned unbeaten Cody Crowley as a potential next foe after Crowley 22-0 withdrew from a planned July 13 welterweight title shot at IBF champion Jaron “Boots” Ennis due to an eye injury.
An upset arrived early when Mexican lightweight prospect Cesar Morales was briefly knocked down in the fourth round of his pro debut and suffered a majority decision loss to Ecuador’s Kevin Mosquera by scores of 38-38, 39-36, 38-37.
Morales, starting a stretch of five fighters cornered by trainer-of-the-year favorite Garcia, flashed effective and precise power, but was defensively vulnerable as Mosquera 3-0 marked him under the right eye and then landed a quick combination that caused Morales’ glove to touch on the canvas – a knockdown being ruled.
Despite a frantic attempt to rally in which Morales knocked Mosquera’s mouthpiece to the canvas for a second time in the bout, Mosquera stayed upright and leaned on the scoring cushion of the knockdown to gain the triumph.
Garcia answered right back with a victory as Southern Californian welterweight Art Barrera Jr. 7-0 (4 KOs) unleashed a vicious barrage of right-left power punches on Jose Carlos Campos Medina 4-2 that caused referee Wes Melton to surge forward and fall while waving off the abuse with two seconds remaining in the second round.
Barrera’s Southland neighbor, super-flyweight Steven Navarro of Inglewood, mirrored that with a second-round stoppage of Puerto Rico’s Gabriel Bernardi (7-2), closing a three-knockdown round with 31 seconds remaining in the second.
Navarro 5-0 (4 KOs) closed the deal by pursuing his wounded foe and smashing him with a left hand to the head, causing referee Caiz Jr. to stop the bout.
Las Vegas’ junior-lightweight DJ Zamora opened the card by extending his unbeaten start to 15-0 with a second-round TKO of Argentina’s Roman Ruben Reynoso 22-6-2. Zamora landed a hard left hook to the jaw to record his 10th career knockout, the end coming at the 1:56 mark.
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