LOS ANGELES – The last time Brian Viloria stepped into the Staples Center ring, triumph nearly turned into tragedy.
In May, Viloria stopped Ruben Contreras in the sixth round. After the fight, Contreras suffered a seizure and underwent surgery to relieve pressure from bleeding on his brain.
Last night, with Contreras at ringside, Viloria won the WBC light flyweight title with a first round stoppage of Eric Ortiz on the undercard of the Morales-Raheem/Pacquiao-Velazquez double header. Late in the first frame, Viloria (18-0 with 12 KOs) rocked Ortiz (24-5-1 with 16 KOs) with a hard right sending him sprawling to the corner. Ortiz managed to tap Viloria with a left to the cheek and Viloria promptly countered with a smashing right to the nose of Ortiz that sent the 28-year-old to the canvas.
As referee Raul Caiz, Jr., started his count, Ortiz regained his footing albeit on weak legs and crumbled to the canvas again. Caiz called a halt to the action with one second remaining.
“I was expecting a long, hard fight for 12 rounds,” Viloria said. “That right hand landed on the money.” Viloria becomes the third member of the 2000 Olympic team to capture a world title joining Jeff Lacy and Jermain Taylor.
This fight not only put Viloria at the top of his weight class, but helped exorcise some of the demons from his last outing. He said that after the fight he did check on the status of Ortiz.
“I wasn’t really concerned for him when he went down because it happened so quick,” Viloria admitted. “I did check with him after the fight. That’s just sportsmanship.”
Seeing Contreras at ringside was definitely inspiring to Viloria.
“Seeing Ruben inspired me,” he said. “I had a whole new fire inside of me. A lot of people doubted me.”
In other undercard action, Vanes Martirosyan of Glendale, Calif., took a unanimous decision over Mexico City’s Gerardo Prieto in a six round super welterweight bout. Despite tiring late and taking a lot of shots, Martirosyan was able to win every round on the judge’s scorecards to improve to 4-0 with 1 KO, while Prieto falls to 4-3-1.
Bantamweight Rey Bautista, fighting out of Cebu City, Philippines knocked out Felix Flores at 1:12 of the third round. Flores, out of Colombia falls to 13-5-1 with 11 KOs.
In a four round toe-to-toe war, Hector Leyva got the best of a final exchange with David Rodela, flooring him with 32 seconds remaining in the final round. Leyva, fighting out of Los Angeles, upped his record to 5-3 with 1 KO, while Rodela drops to 2-1-1 with 2 KOs.
