By: William Holmes
HBO’s Boxing After Dark was broadcast tonight from the Turning Stone Casino and Resort in Verona, NY. Tonight’s card was a triple header, and a short acknowledgement of the passing of legendary trainer Emanuel Steward was stated at the opening of the broadcast.
Emanuel Steward’s presence will be noticeably absent on future HBO World Championship Boxing telecasts.
The first bout of the night was between Miguel Vazquez (31-3) and Marvin Quintero (25-3) for the IBF Lightweight title.
If this was a track meet, Vazquez would have won easily. But this was a boxing match and it was a very close and lackluster fight. Vazquez seemed content on circling away from Quintero’s left hand and peppering him with jabs and lead uppercuts from the outside. Quintero was able to cut off the ring at times and landed some decent punches when they exchanged but he was not able to do it enough.
It was a good enough performance by Vazquez to score the victory, but not good enough to warrant another date on HBO or a shot against a big name opponent. Vazquez retained his IBF Lightweight title with scores of 115-113 for Vazquez, 115-113 Quintero, and 118-110 for Vazquez.
The next bout was in the junior welterweight division between Mauricio Herrera (18-2) and Karim Mayfield (16-0). Herrera was the much taller fighter and he used his reach to his advantage in the early rounds and landed several stiff jabs in the face of Mayfield. Mayfield landed the harder shots, but it wasn’t until round seven that Mayfield began to unload on Herrera with some bombs, especially his overhand right.
Herrera did not back down from Mayfield and ate his biggest punches. In round nine he answered some of Mayfield’s power shots with hard punches of his own. The fight was close enough that neight fighter could afford to take it easy in the last round and they both exchanged hard power shots in the last round. The punch stats showed that Herrera landed more punches but it was clear that Mayfield landed the harder punches.
The judges scored it 96-94, 98-92, and 97-93 for Karim Mayfield.
The main event of the night was between Thomas Dulorme (16-0) and Luis Carlos Abregu (33-1) in the welterweight division.
A well-deserved ten count was given to Emanuel Steward before the start of the fight.
In the beginning of the fight Dulorme showed he had by far the superior hand speed. He appeared in control in the first round of the fight, but this is boxing, and the tide can turn in a split of a second.
Abregu tagged Dulorme with a vicious right hand in the third round and dropped him. Dulorme returned to his feet on very wobbly legs and did all he could to just survive.
In round four Dulorme switched to a southpaw stance and was able to get some control of the fight back with effective punches from the outside. He stayed in this stance for the fifth round and landed several good right hands.
Dulorme should have stayed southpaw, because in the sixth round he switched back to orthodox and was hit with several straight right hands In the seventh round another overhand right hurt Dulorme, and a left hook dropped him for the second time of the night. Dulorme was able to get back to his feet, but the referee had seen enough.
Abregu scores the major upset over Dulorme by a TKO victory.