AJ Banal, bloodied, bruised and battered, sat beside his wife close to midnight Saturday, sobbing and sounding as if the world had come to an end.
Moments before being escorted back to his dressing room, Banal found himself under the volley of Pungluang Sor Singyu?s two-handed assault and on the deck twice as he blew his chance of winning the vacant World Boxing Organization (WBO) bantamweight crown at the Mall of Asia Arena.
?Kaya ko pa naman lumaban,? said Banal, his voice cracking, as he protested referee Tony Weeks? decision to step in at 1:45 of the ninth round.
It was supposed to be a night of coronation for Banal but after nine rounds of furious action before a stunned crowd, Sor Singyu crowned himself as the new WBO 118-lb king after Weeks, working on his 48th world title fight, intervened, seeing that the hometown bet was no longer fit to continue.
Although Banal got up after being knocked down with a flurry, he was in wobbly legs and his face looked as if it had been smashed with an axe.
?I was never in trouble and I knew I was winning the fight starting the fifth round,? said Sor Singyu, who claimed Banal as his 15th Filipino victim.
The wound on Banal?s right eyebrow was opened after an accident clash of heads in the third round and even if Los Angeles-based orthodontist Ed dela Vega stopped the bleeding in-between rounds, it bled as soon as it was hit by the thunderous blows of Sor Singyu.
MORALES LOSES
In Brooklyn, New York, unbeaten Danny Garcia stopped Erik Morales with a powerful left hook in the fourth round on Saturday to retain the World Boxing Association and World Boxing Council light welterweight titles.
Garcia’s punishing left hand spun Morales and sent him falling onto the bottom rope of the ring on his back.
When a Morales cornerman climbed into the ring, referee Benji Esteves stopped the fight 83 seconds into the fourth round.
