Argentina’s slugging junior welterweight Marcos Maidana was the star of the weekend in his dramatic, back-from-the-brink win over Victor Ortiz televised on HBO from Los Angeles, while in Berlin (seen in delayed form on Showtime) middleweight champion Arthur Abraham showed his punching power after a slow start when he battered a game Mahir Oral in 10 rounds.

Maidana against Ortiz was the fight of the year so far, a Zale-Graziano type of thriller with five knockdowns in six rounds — Ortiz down twice, Maidana three times.

Ortiz took some criticism from HBO analyst Max Kellerman for seeming to surrender in the sixth round (although three rounds earlier Kellerman had informed viewers that “clearly Ortiz has a lot of heart”).

Sure, there are boxers who will fight to the bitter end, and we revere them, but I can’t blame Ortiz for indicating with body language and a shake of the head that he’d had enough. He was cut badly over the right eye, his left eye was being pushed shut from underneath by one of those plum-like swellings, he had been down twice and he was getting hurt and hammered by a heavy handed fighter who was coming on strongly.

Ortiz’s post-fight comment about not wanting to go out on his back wasn’t the sort of remark we like to hear from a fighter, but at least he was being completely candid.

This, though, was a fight that Ortiz could so easily have won. If he had just had another 20 or 30 seconds available to him in the second round I think he might have been able to stop Maidana. The Argentinean seemed to be wilting after getting dropped for the second time in the round, but the bell came to his rescue.

Maidana showed tremendous powers of recovery, though, and the fight swung vividly in his favour when he got through with big punches in the fifth, cutting Ortiz severely over the right eye with a left hook, rocking him back with a couple of huge right hands. Ortiz’s distress was apparent as his corner tended to him between rounds. He seemed to be in disbelief, as if he couldn’t believe what was happening to him. His trainer was yelling at him, but I doubt if anything really registered with a fighter who suddenly looked very young and vulnerable.

The fight was over at this point. Maidana knew it, and he ran right through Ortiz in the sixth, overpowering him and sending him down for an eight count. A swelling had suddenly formed under Ortiz’s left eye, the cut over his right was looking ugly and he was in with a fighter who was now looking much the stronger man.

If Ortiz had been allowed to continue he would surely have been bludgeoned in brutal fashion by a surging Maidana, and although the bout was officially stopped due to the cut I think that referee Raul Caiz and the ringside doctor were also influenced by a desire not to let a young fighter take needless punishment.

Although Ortiz lost, he can be proud of contributing to a memorable fight that had the Staples Center crowd roaring. This was a Boxing After Dark fight the way the series was meant to be: two young, ambitious fighters giving all they had. Ortiz didn’t play it safe. He went out seeking to win in spectacular style, and he almost pulled it off.

The first round was breathtaking, with Maidana down from a right hook delivered perfectly from Ortiz’s southpaw stance, then Ortiz getting dropped on his back by a right hand through the middle as the Argentinean fighter fired back.

It looked as if Maidana was on his way out, though, when Ortiz’s right hooks twice floored him in the second round. When Maidana got up the first time and then dropped back down for a few more seconds it made analyst Emanuel Steward wonder if the fighter was on the verge of quitting. There was, though, no quit in Maidana — although I suspect that he might have thought about it, if only for a moment, when he was dropped for the second time in round two (and third time in the fight).

What kept Maidana going, though, was the knowledge that he could hurt and drop Ortiz. He knew that if he could catch Ortiz cleanly, he could turn the tide in his favour — and so he did.

Earlier in the day, in Berlin, Arthur Abraham boxed in such lacklustre fashion for the first three rounds against Mahir Oral that I wondered if the IBF middleweight title was about to change hands. It is not unusual, though, for Abraham to begin a fight unimpressively — and it’s the finish that counts.

Once Abraham began to step up the pace and let the big punches go, Oral was outclassed by the champion’s vastly superior firing power. Down in the fourth and sixth, Oral gamely kept going, but his busy punching was no match for Abraham’s bombs. I thought that Oral was almost gone in the ninth, and what little resistance that remained was soon taken out of him by Abraham’s brutal body blows in the 10th. Referee Earl Brown amazingly seemed willing to let Oral continue when the challenger picked himself off the canvas for the third time in the round — and fifth time in the fight — but Oral’s corner had seen enough.

The Abraham team now has to decide whether he will continue to box at middleweight or move up to 168 pounds. The powerfully built Abraham is known to have considerable difficulty in making 160 pounds. My guess is that he will have a farewell fight at middleweight and then move up.

Flop of the weekend was German heavyweight Steffen Kretschmann, who crumpled all too easily in the opening round against tough Russian journeyman Denis Bakhtov. Now we know why Kretschmann had been matched so protectively — no punch resistance at all.

In the Latin Fury 9 pay-per-view main event, junior featherweight champ Juan Manuel Lopez didn’t look as dynamic as usual but his superior size and strength gradually wore down Olivier Lontchi, who was pulled out by his corner after nine rounds. Lontchi’s evasiveness, ducking and dodging and punch-and-grab tactics made it difficult for Lopez to get in clean punches to the head, but when JuanMa started sinking in right hooks underneath from his southpaw stance he broke down a stubborn challenger.

Steve Molitor looked tentative in winning a split decision over Heriberto Ruiz in their IBF junior featherweight title eliminator in Ontario, Canada, televised on TSN. Molitor was clearly bothered by a cut on the hairline, suffered in a seventh-round clash of heads, but in truth he showed only flashes of the southpaw skills he has displayed in the past. With each man wary of the other, neither wishing to make a mistake, there was little to get excited about, and the Casino Rama crowd started booing as early as round two. Molitor showed a bit more flair, a little more willingness to take the initiative, and it deservedly won him the fight, although only on a split decision.

I know that Ruiz can give anyone a difficult fight, and blood flowing from the cut was bothersome, but I now have to wonder whether last November’s shattering loss against Celestino Caballero has affected Molitor’s confidence, because he boxed with a worrying uncertainty for much of the fight: If Ruiz had just been a bit bolder, this was a fight that Molitor might well have lost.