GIOVANNI SEGURA TKO4 CESAR CANCHILA

When a boxer loses a fight he was widely expected to win, quite often what happens in the rematch is what should have happened in the first fight.

This has happened many times in rematches in boxing history. Patterson-Johansson, Jimmy Carter against Paddy DeMarco, Robinson-Turpin, Nino Benvenuti-Tom Bethea and on and on, with Forrest-Mora and Williams-Quintana being more recent examples.

It happened again on Saturday night when Giovanni Segura stopped Cesar Canchila in four furious rounds to capture the WBA’s interim light-flyweight title.

This is what should have happened last July in Las Vegas. On that occasion, Segura started strongly but, after scoring a second-round knockdown, he fell apart technically and spent the next 10 rounds trying to blast Canchila out of the fight with wild haymakers tossed one at a time. Canchila was able to dominate him with counter punching after dodging the wild misses.

It was a different story in the rematch, televised by Azteca America. It was a different, more intense Segura, his mind much more concentrated on the task ahead of him.

When Segura came out in a very determined manner, a do-or-die look in his eyes, I had the strong sense that Canchila was in trouble.

As had happened in the first meeting, Segura started fast. This time, though, he didn’t let Canchila off the hook.

Canchila fought back bravely after being dropped in the opening round and again in the second, but he was outgunned and simply couldn’t win a shootout with the more powerful puncher.

Although Canchila gave it a great try, the Colombian was being hit too often and too hard. Canchila was able to land his share of punches but he couldn’t hurt Segura — or not sufficiently to slow him down. Meanwhile, the Mexican-born fighter from the Los Angeles area was rocking Canchila time and again, and Segura seemed to draw strength from the Mexicali crowd and the chants of “Mexico, Mexico”.

Fighting in the southpaw position, Segura was throwing punches for all he was worth, hurling everything he had. His left eye was looking a bit swollen in the fourth, but I felt that nothing was going to stop him.

Maybe Segura would have grown arm-weary had the fight gone past the middle rounds, but he had done so much damage that I doubt if Canchila would been able to mount a serious rally.

Canchila was game and he fought desperately hard to try to stem the tide, but I felt that he was weakening from one round to the next, and it didn’t help him to get hit by some heavy punches after the bell had sounded to end the fourth round. The Panamanian referee, Julio Alvarado, seemed to lose control of the situation, and it appeared that he stopped the fight almost as an afterthought.

Ideally the referee should have called for a time out and Canchila should have been given time to recover after being hit by illegal blows, but I did feel that Segura would have stopped the Colombian in any case, perhaps even in the next round. I was surprised that Canchila was able to come back as well as he did from each of the two knockdowns, but on this night Segura was not going to be denied.