PHILADELPHIA — The trash talk between Jessie Magdaleno and Isaac Dogboe was intense and personal before their fight Saturday night, but it was Dogboe who reigned supreme by scoring the knockout he predicted.
In a grueling and physical fight, Dogboe rallied from a first-round knockdown to drop Magdaleno three times in an 11th-round knockout victory to win a junior featherweight world title before 3,727 Saturday night in the main event of the Top Rank on ESPN card at the Liacouras Center on the campus of Temple University.
Magdaleno, making his second title defense, was fighting for the first time in a year, partly because of a hand injury that forced him to withdraw from a mandatory fight with Cesar Juarez that was scheduled for Nov. 11. While he was out, Juarez traveled to Dogboe’s home country of Ghana in January and got knocked out in a vacant interim title fight that made Dogboe the mandatory challenger for Magdaleno.
They have been taunting each on social media since and continued at the news conference Thursday with each promising a knockout victory and Magdaleno belittling Dogboe’s skills.
But Dogboe made him eat his words in a tremendous battle that looked like it might be over early.
Magdaleno had a huge first round. He dropped Dogboe with a left hand in the midst of a flurry, knocked him into the ropes with a left hand later in the round and landed several clean punches that shook Dogboe.
A straight left hand rocked Dogboe in the third round, forcing him to hold on to Magdaleno, who seemed to rattle him with every solid shot he landed. By the fourth round, Dogboe’s left eye was swelling.
Dogboe (19-0, 13 KOs), 23, who was a 2012 Olympian for Ghana, came roaring back in the fifth round when he nailed Magdaleno with a clean right hand on the chin for a knockdown 30 seconds into the round. He had Magdaleno on the ropes and continued to pressure him but Magdaleno got himself together and stuck his chin out at Dogboe to taunt him, after which Dogboe threw and missed several wild punches.
Dogboe came on strong middle rounds. In the seventh, he pinned Magdaleno along the ropes and unloaded to the head and body for a stretch as Magdaleno looked to cover up.
Dogboe hurt Magdaleno with a right hand along the ropes in the 10th round and then unleashed several more hard shots upstairs and downstairs. He continued to bull forward as Magdaleno tried to dance out of the way but kept getting caught.
Magdaleno (25-1, 18 KOs), a 26-year-old southpaw from Las Vegas, appeared to be fading in the 11th round when Dogboe crumpled him to all fours with a powerful left hand to the head. Dogboe showed no mercy, attacking him with abandon when the fight resumed. He pinned Magdaleno in the corner and continued to pound on him until he went down again, causing referee Benjy Esteves to wave the fight off at 1 minute, 38 seconds.
