By: William Holmes
The Illusions Theatre in San Antonio, Texas, was the host site for Friday’s Showtime boxing card that featured three televised fights and featured several fights from Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s promotional team.
The first bout of the night was between Chris Pearson (11-0) and Steven Martinez (15-2) in the super middleweight division.
Pearson is one of Mayweather’s prized prospects in his stable, but he struggled early against Martinez, who was landing the cleaner punches and controlling the action inside the ring.
Martinez suffered a cut in the third round from an apparent head butt, and Pearson began to take over in the fourth round as his counter-punches were landing cleanly and were way more effective.
As the fight wore on, Pearson only got better and continued to batter Martinez, who was never able to mount much of an offense.
The judges scored it 98-92, 97-93, and 97-93 for Chris Pearson, who remains undefeated.
The second bout of the night was between Swedish boxer Badou Jack (18-1-1) and Mexican boxer Francisco Sierra (26-8-1) in the super middleweight division.
Several of Badou Jack’s past fights have been aired on Showtime, but he has yet to overly impress the audience. However, his opponent gained an unbelievable twenty-eight pounds in one night(!) since the weigh-ins, and Jack had to face a larger man on the day of the fight.
Jack dominated this bout in which both fighters were cut from a headbutt in the first round. Even though Sierra had a significant weight advantage on the actual day of the fight, he was unable to hurt Jack or outbox him. Jack boxed a smart fight, and was able to land at will and wear down Sierra.
It was tough to give Sierra a single round as Jack had Sierra bleeding and was dominating the action. Jack unleashed a combination in the sixth round and Sierra didn’t punch back and took the hits. The referee, rightly, stopped the fight at 1:58 of the sixth round in an uncompetitive, one-sided bout.
The main event of the night was between Erislandy Lara (20-2-2) and Ishe Smith (26-7) for the WBA Super Welterweight Title.
Lara is known for his superior though sometimes boring boxing technique, and Smith is not exactly known for putting on exciting fights, either.
The first round started off a little dirty, as both fighters got tangled up by the ropes and Smith could be seen talking trash in Lara’s face at the end of the round. It was clear early on, however, that Lara was at a different level than Smith.
Lara pot-shotted Smith for a majority of the fight, and was able to avoid Smith’s attempts to keep the fight in tight and attack the body. Smith was able to get to Lara’s body at times, but for the most part Lara out-boxed Smith and greatly impressed the crowd In the middle rounds of the fight.
Unfortunately for Smith, he was unable to get off any eye-opening combinations and mainly landed one punch at a time. Smith had a good seventh and eighth rounds, but Lara was able to regroup and close the fight out strong.
Lara won a clear decision with scores of 119-109, 119-109 and 117-111.
