Rocha and Curiel battle to hard-fought draw: highlights and results

Alexis Rocha ends up with majority draw with Raul Curiel as both fighters look towards immediate rematch.

Alexis Rocha and Raul Curiel battled to a hard-fought majority draw tonight in DAZN’s main event. Rocha (25-2-1, 16 KO) started off the fight well, boxing well and largely disarming Raul Curiel (15-0-1, 13 KO) through the first third of the fight, but then made a befuddling tactical adjustment where he began to slug it out with Curiel for basically the rest of the fight.

Traditional boxing wisdom advises to box the brawler and brawl the boxer, but Rocha — who was clearly the better boxer — made the decision to brawl with the brawler, and that gave Curiel all the opportunities he needed to get off his power shots and combinations and he took full advantage. For most of the second half there was a lot of back-and-forth action as the fighters took turns getting off on one another until the official judges turned in final scores of 116-112 for Rocha, and two scores of 114-114.

In the post-fight interview both fighters admitted that it was a close fight with Rocha saying he thought he thought he edged the fight 7-5, but both also immediately expressed their interest in having an immediate rematch.

• Charles Conwell TKO-7 Gerardo Vergara

Charles Conwell (21-0, 17 KOs) faced his first undefeated fighter in a few years and brutalized Gerardo Vergara (20-1, 13 KOs) over seven rounds before the referee was forced to intervene to stop the fight at the 2:51 mark. Aside from a cagey first round, it was pretty much one-way action with Conwell strafing Vergara with power shots to the head and body round after round before it ultimately came to an end.

To Vergara’s credit, he didn’t come to to give up at the first signs of adversity but the momentum against him began to snowball early, despite how hard he tried to fight back. Vergara took a lot of clean punches in the seventh round and one in particular had him reeling which opened up the opportunity for Conwell to launch an unimpeded assault to force the stoppage.

• John “Scrappy” Ramirez UD-10 Ephraim Bui

John “Scrappy” Ramirez (14-1, 9 KO) got himself back in the win column tonight with a unanimous decision win over Ephraim Bui (10-1, 8 KO) on official scores of 97-93, 97-93, and 97-93. Scrappy survived the early aggression of Bui but by the midpoint of the fight he had Bui pretty much figured out, and used his sharper punching to counter and pick apart Bui over the entire second half of the fight.

• Marlen Esparza UD-10 Arely Mucino

Marlen Esparza (15-2, 1 KO) notched a win in a relatively difficult to watch fight with Arely Mucino (32-5-2, 11 KO) tonight, winning on official scores of 98-92, 98-92, 97-93. Much of the fight was sloppy action combined with rough house tactics so not a lot of ‘highlights’ to come by, but Esparza takes W and moves on.

• Victor Morales TKO-8 Ivan Guardado

Victor Morales moves to 20-0-1, 10 KO in the DAZN opener after the fight was called off at the start of the eighth round due to Ivan Guardado’s (16-3-1, 6 KO) right eye getting swollen shut. Guardado had attempted to steamroll Morales in the opening seconds of the fight but once Morales survived that early storm his used his far better craft to rack up points against Guardado.

Morales was clearly outboxing Guardado from then on except his lapses in defense caused him to get caught with a number of clean power shots that clearly shook him up multiple times. Morales, however, did enough critical damage to Guardado’s eye to where the ringside physician wasn’t comfortable with letting it continue, so Morales gets the official stoppage win but took damage along the way he’ll surely be feeling tomorrow.