LAS VEGAS – The gold medal is already in Andy Cruz’s boxing cabinet.
A world title moved a significant step closer Saturday night in the willing exchanges that paced him to a convincing lightweight victory over rugged Omar Salcido at The Cosmopolitan.
It said everything that the beaten-up Salcido was grasping for Cruz to stop an onslaught of right-handed power blows in the 10th round that clinched the wide divide between the combatants.
Judges Dave Moretti and Zachary Young had it 98-92, and Chris Migliore scored it 99-91, all for Cruz, now 5-0.
The Cuban flipped the script from what’s expected of Cuban fighters, who have long struggled to sell tickets because of their expertise in evasive tactics.
Cruz, training under Bozy Ennis in Philadelphia, is dedicated to complementing his amateur skill with a fierceness and resolve to wound opponents.
“I’ve changed him,” said Ennis, father of IBF welterweight titleholder Boots Ennis. “I told him, ‘You could’ve stopped [Salcido].’”
Cruz, 29, entered the night ranked No. 4 in the WBA behind titleholder Gervonta “Tank” Davis, No. 5 in the IBF and No. 6 in the WBC, trailing three-division champion Stevenson. He’s pressing to move up.
In the 2021 Olympics in Tokyo, Cruz posted a 4-1 victory to win a gold medal against Keyshawn Davis, 12-0, who will fight for the WBO lightweight belt February 14 in New York.
Saturday was a master class.
Cruz was content to let his crisp jab win him the first round as he digested Salcido’s response and timing. Cruz deployed more right counterpunches in the second, evading Salcido’s quest for sustained pressure.
Cruz took it a step further in the third, deciding to exchange with Mexico’s Salcido in a maneuver to display his faster hands, allowing him to land the more productive blows to the head.
This is the sea change happening among Cuban boxers, who have increased their offensive skill in the amateurs and beyond.
Cruz flashed all of that in the fourth round, showing no fear of Salcido by beating him to the punch repeatedly and delivering precise blows, like the uppercut to the chin and the straight left to the nose.
The bout turned into a fuller brawl in the fifth, with Salcido, 20-2, landing effective body shots and Cruz absorbing them, answering back with flush rights to the head and body.
Cruz wasn’t here to remain physically unblemished. He was here to keep his record unmarked and thrust himself into the mix of Stevenson, Tank Davis and Keyshawn Davis (no relation) as an entertaining, sophisticated, elite contender who can scrap.
Cruz emphasized the point by rocking Salcido in the seventh with a right to the head. The punch was telling because it wasn’t a massive offering, but rather a clean pounder that revealed the accumulation of Cruz’s damage.
Salcido, after all, was here to impose his will, and it was Cruz flexing his grit, like a crushing right uppercut in the eighth that preceded a type of Ali feet shuffle that sent a distinct message to Salcido:
You expected this kind of flash. You got that whooping.
Lance Pugmire is BoxingScene’s senior U.S. writer and an assistant producer for ProBox TV. Pugmire has covered boxing since the early 2000s, first at the Los Angeles Times and then at The Athletic and USA Today. He won the Boxing Writers’ Association of America’s Nat Fleischer Award in 2022 for career excellence.
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