Mikey Garcia
Failing to make weight had absolutely no ill-effect on Garcia (32-0) as he destroyed a shot Juan Manuel Lopez (33-3) tonight at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, Texas. Garcia fought a perfect fight by quickly breaking down Lopez with punishing jabs and counterpunches before knocking him down once in round two and a second and final time at 1:35 of the fourth.
The end came as Mikey hurt the off-balance Lopez with a short right and then finished him off with a wide looping left that landed flush and sent Juanma sprawling. When he got up, referee Rafael Ramos took a look and when Lopez moved backwards, Ramos waved it off with a perfect call.
Garcia put on a virtual clinic with his extremely heavy jabs and counters, but he had the perfect foil in Lopez whose legs seemed to be gone coming in and whose chin, already highly questionable, was prominently exposed for Garcia?s pinpoint shots. Juanma best chance was to get inside but Garcia?s jabs and appropriate separation made that impossible.
It was not pleasant to witness how far down Lopez has gone compared to how promising he was back in 2008 and 2009.
Terrence Crawford
In the first televised bout of the evening, lightweight Terrence Crawford (21-0) continued to impress as he KO?d an outclassed but game Alejandro ?Flacucho? Sanabria (34-1-1 coming in) at the start of the sixth round with a short and fully leveraged left hook. The classy and stylish Crawford set Sanabria up for the kill with a tremendous body attack that had Flacucho gulping for air like a guppy out of water. Crawford is fast becoming one of the very best lightweights in the world and blends a solid defense featuring superb counterpunching with an offense that has a full arsenal of weapons. He also appears to have a good chin.
And referee Laurence Cole, like Ramos in the main event, worked a perfect fight tonight making a solid call on the stoppage. The sometimes maligned (commentator Steve Weisfeld indirectly did it tonight), but vastly improved, Cole has been doing fine work for the past two or three years and has, in my view, erased the perception and/or viewpoint that he is less than a first-class referee.
All in all, the two winners?Crawford and Garcia?were as close to perfect as could be and the two referees followed suit.
Tonight was a night for the purist.
