JESUS SOTO KARASS W10 CARSON JONES

Although Carson Jones put up a very game effort, Jesus Soto Karass was just too strong for him in a one-sided but entertaining welterweight bout that topped the bill on the first of Azteca America’s new Friday night series of fights.

Soto Karass fully deserved the widely scored unanimous decision in his favour: 97-91, 98-90 and a slightly too-wide 99-89. Jones scored a moral victory, though, by finishing the 10 rounds.

The end looked near when Jones twice took a knee in the third round, but he fought back with commendable courage and I thought that he actually outpunched Soto Karass in the fifth and sixth rounds. He also rallied well in the eighth, but he was hanging on in the final round as the Mexican fighter closed strongly, a right uppercut almost crumpling Jones to the canvas.

Soto Karass is a tough, exciting fighter but he is often wide open. Jones hit him with everything he had but the underdog from Oklahoma City just couldn’t hurt Soto Karass sufficiently to have a chance of turning the tide.

At times Jones was hitting Soto Karass almost at will with flush shots. If Soto Karass gets hit like that in his mandatory WBC title challenge against Andre Berto he is going to be in trouble.

I did get the impression, though, that Soto Karass might not have been at his best physically. There were moments when he dropped his arms and backed off, as if feeling the need to catch a breather. Always he came on again, though, and Jones was pounded by some heavy right hands, hooks and uppercuts as well as a number of wicked-looking left hooks to the body.

Jones showed some nice movement and was able to cover up and ride out a number of storms, but for most of the fight he was under siege as Soto Karass did his best to batter him into submission. It says a lot for Jones’s gameness and conditioning that he was able to stick it out to the bitter end.