Jean Pascal celebrates his victory over Chad Dawson

Chad Dawson (29-1, 17 KOs) received the first loss of his career tonight against Canadian Jean Pascal (26-1, 15 KOs) at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Canada as he successfully defended his WBC light heavyweight title.

Dawson was tentative early on and seemed reluctant to fire back when Pascal jumped in with punches instead electing to cover up and avoid being hit. Trouble was as the rounds began to go by Pascal was building a solid lead clearly winning rounds based off of his flurries and at times he seemed to have Dawson hurt.

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On Friday August 13th from the Citizens Business Bank Arena in Ontario, California, Chris “The Nightmare” Arreola (28-2, 25 KOs) dominated Manuel “El Toro” Quezada (29-5, 18 KOs) over 12 rounds of boxing. In a mostly unentertaining fight Arreola, with a 28 lbs advantage,  was just too much for the smaller Quezada in every aspect of the fight. Arreola used his superior work rate against the, at times, uninterested Quezada to dictate the pace of the fight. The first 8 rounds were uneventful and at times just plain boring, mimicking a casual sparring session between stablemates. The ninth round saw Quezada go down from a left uppercut, then moments later, go down again from what seemed to be an accumulation of punches. Everyone expected Arreola to come out in the tenth and finish the hurt Quezada but El Toro dug deep and out landed Arreola by 38 punches to put forth his best effort of the fight. With momentum on his side Quezada was finally putting in some intent behind his punches as Arreola looked to be tiring and possibly be falling into trouble. But in the final round Arreola finished strong as he outworked and dropped an exhausted Quezada to try and erase any memory of his early performance in the fight. Chris Arreola took the Unanimous Decision with the scores of 117-108, 118-107 and 118-107 to improve to 29-2, 25 KOs while Manuel Quezada fell to 29-6, 18 KOs.

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Alex Leapai

Alex “The Lionheart” Leapai 20-3-3 (16) continued his recent good run of form and beat another veteran American yesterday when he stopped former World title challenger Owen “What the heck” Beck 29-6 (20) in six rounds in Queensland, Australia.

Leapai looked in good shape against the overweight Beck but once again showed his shortcomings as Beck managed to land several combinations to Leapai  who as normal looked to fight on the inside and looked to throw big punches at every opportunity.

Leapai took over in the fifth and had his man in trouble but the end did not come until the next round when the referee rescued the beaten American.

Leapai is rumoured to be fighting the thought to be retired former British champion Danny Williams 41-9 (31), also in Australia in four weeks time.

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Devon Alexander “The Great” (21-0, 13 KOs) defended his Jr welterweight titles against former champion Andriy Kotelnik (31-4-1, 13 KOs) winning by a unanimous decision with all three judges scoring the fight 116-112 which coincidently was the same score for Tavoris Cloud (21-0, 18 KOs) who defended his portion of the light heavyweight crown against “Road Warrior” Glen Johnson (50-14-2, 34 KOs).

It’s not often I disagree with HBO’s unofficial ringside judge Harold Lederman but tonight I thought he and the official judges got it wrong I thought Kotelnik did enough to win.

Alexander came out boxing behind his jab moving round the ring, creating angles and it appeared as though his hand speed would carry the day but Kotelnik proved harder to hit than expected and after a few rounds were in the books, although Alexander was winning the rounds based on work rate, Kotelnik was beginning to land the cleaner shots.

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On Friday night from the Don Haskins Center in El Paso, Texas, hometown favorite Antonio “Tono” Escalante (22-2, 14 KOs) squared up against rugged veteran Edel “Cuate” Ruiz (31-22-5, 20 KOs) from Los Mochis, Mexico in a 10 round bout. The 25 yr. old Escalante has a fan friendly style and has power on both hands all while making it too easy for his opponents to hit him. Escalante has been on a 9 bout winning streak including KO wins over top rated opponents Mike Oliver and Gary Stark Jr. before he was upset by former world champ Mauricio Pastrana. Ruiz is a tough fighter who has been in the ring with several former and current world champs and most recently knocked out heavy favorite Clarence Adams in 4 rounds in his last outing.

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Tonight at the Grand Casino in Hinkley, Minnesota unbeaten Chris Martin((19-0-2, 5 KOs) out boxed previously undefeated contender Chris Avalos (16-1, 13 KOs) winning a split decision although the fight was never that close.

Avalos was having problems landing his power shots and kept switching back and forth from orthodox to southpaw to no avail. Martin’s defense was exceptional making Avalos unable to land anything effective and counter punching brilliantly in spots. The only time he lost rounds was because he wasn’t throwing enough but when he was he was landing clean effective shots that not only discouraged but eventually wore down Avalos who looked a beaten fighter before the final bell ended.

As Avalos searched for the big punch that would never come he began getting even more reckless and in the final round was stunned by a left hook moments before the bell to end the tenth.

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FOTY Rematch!

On July 31, 2010 Juan Manuel Marquez and Juan Diaz engaged in a rematch of their 2009 fight of the year. The two Juans put on an absolutely inspired performance the first time around and drew a huge crowd for their second stanza as they contested the WBO lightweight and WBA super lightweight title belts.

Marquez came in at 50-5-1with 37 KOs, now at age 36, and hoping to set up a third fight with Manny Pacquiao. Diaz, at ten years younger had 35 wins, 17 by knockout, 3 losses and no draws coming in. His only KO loss came from a vicious Marquez uppercut in their first fight, so he signed for this rematch looking for revenge. Their first meeting was in Texas but this time it took place in the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada and was shown on international HBO PPV. The referee was Vic Drakulich, and the three judges were Patricia Morse Jarman, Jerry Roth, and Glenn Trowbridge for the scheduled 12 rounder, with the usual suspects as HBO announcers.

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