By: William Holmes
Errol Spence Jr., the man many consider to be the top welterweight in the world, returned to his home state of Texas in Frisco at the Ford Center to defend his IBF Welterweight Title against his mandatory challenger. The Dallas Cowboys Organization strongly supported Errol Spence’s return to his hometown.
The opening bout of the night was between Javier Fortuna (33-2-1) and Adrian Granados (18-6-2) in the super lightweight division.
Photo Credit: Showtime Boxing Twitter Account
Fortuna was former champion in the super featherweight division and is fighting up to two weight classes higher than he normally does. Granados had both a reach and height advantage and it was obvious in the ring.
Grandaos was on the attack early on and landing shots to the body. Fortuna was sharp with his straight left hands and was landing the cleaner shots early on. Fortuna continued to land the cleaner punches in the second round but Granados was using his size to push around Fortuna.
Granados had a good third round and again was using his size to his advantage. Fortuna lost two points this fight for holding, but those points may have been taken away too early.
The fight came to a sudden end in the fourth round when Fortuna was pushed out the ring in between the ropes and may have hit his head on the ring steps on equipment outside. They had to place his neck in a brace and get a stretcher to take him to be evaluated.
The official result of the fight was a no decision due to a fighter getting hurt before the end of the fourth round. The fight was stopped at 2:50 of the fourth round.
The next bout of the night was between Daniel Roman (24-2-1) and Moises Flores (25-0) for the WBA Super Bantamweight Title.
Flores came in overweight at the weigh ins and looked like the significantly bigger man in the ring. Flores was swinging wildly and wide early on and Roman appeared to be more settled. Roman highlighted the opening round with a good lead right hand left uppercut combination.
Roman was focusing to the body for most of the fight and was doubling his left hooks and uppercuts in the second and third round.
Flores kept coming forward in the fourth and fifth rounds, but Roman’s counters were finding his target while he was able to side step around his oncoming opponent. Most of Flores punches bounced off the shoulders and guard of Roman in the sixth round, but he had a good seventh round and may have stolen it.
By the ninth round both boxers had thrown over 1000 punches combined but Roman was landing at a higher clip Roman was lighter on his feet in the tenth round and his body shots had slowed Flores down tremendously.
Flores needed a knockout in the final round to pull out a victory, but he didn’t have enough energy to seriously threaten Roman.
The final scores were 116-112, 118-110, and 120-108 for Danny Roman.
The main event of the evening was between Errol Spence Jr. (23-0) and Carlos Ocampo (22-0) for the IBF Welterweight Title.
This was the first world title fight for Ocampo against the highly talented southpaw Errol Spence. Spence slowly inched forward in the opening stanza and took some surprisingly good body shots from Ocampo. Spence was able to land a good straight left to the chin of Ocampo that slowed him down momentarily, but Ocampo was making a good showing of himself early on.
With time running out in the first Errol Spence landed two blistering hooks to the body of Ocampo that immediately dropped him to his knees.
Ocampo was unable to get up before the count of ten.
Errol Spence wins by knockout with one second left in the first round.
