JUAN MANUEL LOPEZ KO1 DANIEL PONCE DE LEON

The fight that I was looking forward to most of all this weekend turned out to be an astonishing one-round blowout as Juan Manuel Lopez destroyed Daniel Ponce De Leon in two minutes, 25 seconds.

One moment De Leon was steaming in, looking strong, and, as HBO analyst Emanuel Steward said, comfortable — the next moment he was on the floor.

A star was born, certainly, as the HBO commentary team agreed — Lopez was sensational.

I had been aware of the possibility that De Leon might get thoroughly outboxed in the 122-pound title bout, but I must confess I had never dreamed that he wouldn’t even make it through the first round.

In fact, the one thing most people were agreed upon was that De Leon would have Lopez under pressure in a long fight, even if he was getting outpointed.

After all, De Leon had never shown a chin problem, although admittedly he did get dropped by the Thai, Sod Looknongyangtoy.

De Leon stood up to some heavy hits from Gerry Penalosa, and the Filipino can really bang. The freakishly tall and hurtful hitting Celestino Caballero landed his best punches and the game De Leon kept taking the fight to him for 12 rounds — and even won the last round on the scorecards.

So, for De Leon to get knocked out in one round has to be considering really surprising, shocking even — but, well, that’s boxing.

Full credit to Lopez, who stayed cool and composed under De Leon’s initial heavy-handed assault, waited for the right moment to fire back, then caught his fellow-southpaw with a full-leverage right hook that simply blasted the Mexican slugger out of the fight. Even though De Leon got up he was gone, and Lopez’s finishing barrage was brutal to behold. When De Leon went down for the second time, referee Michael Ortega didn’t bother to count.

As if all of this wasn’t dreadful enough for De Leon, he also suffered a cut over the left eye. Boxing can be a cruel business.