WEEKEND WRAP: APRIL 17/18

It wasn’t a loaded weekend of televised boxing but it was a lively one, with ShoBox on Friday and the Top Rank PPV show in the Philippines on Saturday, and the big winners were Brian Viloria and Nonito Donaire, U.S. fighters of Filipino heritage who starred in their ancestral homeland.

The biggest star was Viloria, though, and I thought he was well-nigh sensational in his upset knockout win over Mexico's Ulises Solis. This was the night (well, actually Sunday morning in the Philippines) when Viloria put it all together — all the speed, power, talent, concentration and desire for victory that in this fight made him look a complete boxer-puncher.

In the past, some of the ingredients have been missing. However, Viloria delivered the fighting display of his life — appropriately in his Filipino homecoming — as he outboxed and outfought Solis before dramatically knocking him out in the 11th round to capture the IBF light-flyweight title.

Viloria had disappointing nights against Mexican fighters Omar Nino Romero and Edgar Sosa, but not this time. He came out in such a positive manner in the first round, rocking Solis back across the ring with right hands and left hooks, that one sensed immediately that this was going to be long, hard and most likely losing title defence by the champion from Guadalajara.

Docked two points for low blows, cut over both eyes, Solis was in a hopeless situation by the seventh round. His only chance was to put so much pressure on Viloria that he could somehow force his way into control of the fight on sheer grit and willpower, but the “Hawaiian Punch” was never going to let that happen.

Whenever it seemed that Solis might be gaining a tenuous foothold in the fight, so Viloria would come back to hammer him with big, eye-catching punches.

In the past, Solis has been able to dictate the course of a fight with a superb left jab followed by combinations, but Viloria had all the answers. Viloria was bombing him with right hands over the top of Solis’s left, at times even outjabbing him, and as the crowd roared with every punch the challenger landed, so Solis’s plight worsened.

Solis had his moments with the jab, the right hand and body punches, but although he fought bravely and well, he wasn’t able to hurt Viloria to any great degree — and he was getting hurt himself. When Solis gave a little, frustrated shake of the head in the 10th round it indicated he had finally realised what I had suspected several rounds earlier, that this was not going to be his night. However, game to the bitter end, Solis was still carrying the fight to Viloria right up to the moment when he got caught by the blockbuster of a right hand that ended his reign as champion.

Viloria produced a performance that exceeded anything he has done before, at a point in his career when he needed it most — it couldn’t have turned out any better for him.

In the other title fight, flyweight champion Nonito Donaire, from San Leandro, CA but of Filipino heritage, looked like a monster as he destroyed previously unbeaten Raul Martinez in four rounds. Donaire towered over the challenger from San Antonio and looked much the bigger man, and when Martinez went down twice in the first round it was obvious that this fight would not last long.

I had expected a stiff challenge from Martinez but he was outclassed and getting hurt by big shots, especially Donaire’s left uppercut. Down again in the second, he was on borrowed time and I couldn’t fault referee Pete Podgorski for waving the finish when Martinez was sent flying to the canvas by a left uppercut in the fourth. Although Martinez got up and seemed eager to continue, four knockdowns in four rounds was quite enough.

Yuriorkis Gamboa boxed a patient, disciplined fight in stopping Jose Rojas in 10 rounds to win a featherweight title in the ShoBox main event on Friday. There could have been a bit more urgency, but I think that in this fight the idea was for Gamboa to be dominant while not getting caught by any silly shots — he’s been down too many times as it is. Rojas is an experienced, awkward sort of fighter and he was a bit dangerous with his looping blows from the southpaw position, so Gamboa took his time and steadily chopped down the 37-year-old Venezuelan.

It wasn’t the devastating display many had expected, more in the nature of a “no mistakes” type of fight, and I had the impression that Gamboa can easily step up a few gears when faced with a sterner test. I had the impression that Gamboa was boxing to orders in this fight, and as Nick Charles noted in the commentary, it was most likely a case of “win this one, look good the next time” — although Gamboa looked rather good to me.

Perhaps the best fight of the weekend for two-sided action came in the ShoBox opening 12-rounder, when unbeaten Turkish welterweight Selcuk Aydin ground out a hard-earned, split decision win over Said Ouali.

Aydin is not a skilled boxer and he might even be considered a little limited when it comes to world class, but he is strong, heavy-handed and very hard to discourage, marching in tank-like with gloves up in front of his face until he is close enough to throw his punches. As Steve Farhood observed in the commentary, Aydin has good hand speed. At times I thought he might be on the verge of overpowering Ouali on the ropes, but the Las Vegas-based Moroccan rallied often enough and well enough to get the vote of one of the judges.

Ouali did some classy scoring from out of his southpaw stance. Each man ripped hooks to the body. It was a good, old-fashioned, you hit me, I hit you, type of fight. Aydin showed character to fight through a shaky spell when he got wobbled by a right hook high on the head in the third round, and he was staggered by a left hand in the 12th. What won the fight for Aydin were his two-handed onslaughts when he had Ouali backed up on the ropes. Trainer Roger Mayweather sounded exasperated with Ouali for letting himself get herded onto the ropes time and again. “You’re making it look like he’s doing something he ain’t,” Mayweather said in a plaintive tone. Aydin was doing enough, though, to win the majority of the rounds.

Finally, a nod to Peter Manfredo Jr. for coming back in fine style after the brutal bludgeoning he suffered against Sakio Bika. Manfredo showed grit in getting through some stormy passages in his seventh-round knockout win over the incredibly game and tough Walid Smichet on French-Canadian TV on Saturday afternoon.

Smichet, moving up from 160 pounds to meet Manfredo in the super middle division, threw everything he had and kept coming back for more after getting hit by hard shots. Manfredo’s superior skill and size was winning him the fight but he got hit by some looping right hands and left hooks and found himself drawn into trading punches instead of picking off the Tunisian-born Quebec fighter from the outside. This provided wonderful entertainment, though, for the crowd at the Montreal Casino.

Even though Smichet was losing the rounds and suffered a flash knockdown in the third he was trying so hard that I felt, after five rounds, that he still had an outside chance to turn things his way. This feeling changed in the sixth when Manfredo landed a series of huge right hands and a massive left hook. It was astonishing that Smichet not only stood up to the bombardment but even came back slugging, but he had taken so much punishment that he now had little left but courage. Yet Smichet was still taking the fight to Manfredo in the seventh, only to get caught and dropped flat on his back by a big left hook in the closing seconds of the round. Referee Marlon B. Wright started to count, then waved the finish when it was clear that Smichet wouldn’t be getting up.

In a weekend of hard-hitting and early endings, Manfredo’s spectacular KO win was, for me, the most vivid moment — until, of course,Viloria landed his championship-winning right hand a world away in Metro Manila.