Prospect Pablo “Cesar” Cano (20-0-1, 15KO) defeated Oscar Leon (28-13, 18KO), by a split decision last night in the main event for “Solo Boxeo Tecate” in Mexico City, Mexico.
As the fight started, Cano came out and took control of the ring stalking his opponent while Oscar Leon backed away and circled to the left. At 2:30 of round one, Cano threw a combination and landed a straight right upstairs and a double left-hook to the body. In the beginning Leon wasn’t
doing much, just floating his jab out there and sometimes following it up with a straight left. Cano was mixing it up early between the body and head, while Leon was starting to have success landing straight lefts to the chin of Cano making him miss. Then Leon countered a Cano right-hand with a really nice left-hook to the jaw. Leon really started countering well on the move and was landing stiff right-hooks and straight lefts, while Cano’s accuracy started to falter in round two. Leon dominated round two.
To start round three, Leon landed a nice left straight to Cano’s body then went upstairs with a flurry and landed a left straight and right-hook. Leon tagged Cano with another right-hook and attacked thinking he had him hurt and clocked him again with two more right-hooks. Cano landed a really hard right-hook at 41 seconds of round three then pushed Leon against the ropes thinking he had him hurt and landed two more right-hooks. With 31 seconds to go, Cano staggered Leon with yet another right-hook. The round ended with Leon looking tired.
In the mid rounds Leon got hit with a low blow and went down needing a few to recover. Leon was becoming busier and countering well, he was faster and landing nice right upper-cuts and hooks. I had Leon winning rounds four through eight with good counter punching and good defense, bobbing and weaving, eluding most of Cano’s punches. Cano kept up a high volume of punches but wasn’t accurate in the middle rounds. Leon started coming forward pushing Cano back, it seemed as though Leon was letting Cano take control of the real estate in every round but whenever Leon wanted to switch hats, he became the one moving forward and stalking and took over the ring usually half way through the rounds.
Late in the fight Cano started to press the action a little more and his punches started finding the target more often. Leon with his confidence high from all the right straights and left-hooks he was delivering to Cano’s head, began to charge in behind double and triple left straights upstairs, though Cano was flat-footed and couldn’t take advantage of the carelessness. In the late rounds, Cano started snapping back the head of Leon with right straights and right-hooks to the chin.
They were exchanging heavy blows in the last couple rounds with Cano barely getting the better of the exchanges. All the work from Leon for the duration of the fight was to the head, he did not target the torso often. Meanwhile Cano was throwing lots of borderline punches and Leon complained of low-blows.
In the tenth and final round both men came out swinging, then the pace slowed for a moment. With 2:15 in the round Cano landed a hard right-left up top then a nice stiff jab. They started exchanging with a minute to go in the fight with both men landing and Cano getting the edge. Leon finished the fight strong but lost rounds nine and ten just the same.
Two judges scored the fight 96-94 for Cano, and one scored it 96-94 for Oscar Leon. While Cano stayed busy all night coming forward and mixing it up well between head and body, he did not land nearly as many meaningful punches as Leon, who bobbed, weaved, and countered all night. I thought Leon won 95-94 but it certainly wasn’t highway robbery and a case could be made for Cano winning, which he did.
In the co-main event Marco Periban (8-0, 5KO) defeated Jason Naugler (18-13-1, 11KO) by TKO. These boys came out swinging in the first and landed some big blows. Naugler was throwing some haymakers and a few landed. Periban landed some hard shots of his own in the first, but then he settled into boxing, being more precise and calculating, and picking his shots. He began to pick apart Naugler with every punch in the book, I mean every punch and lots of them.
Periban would throw mostly precise short love taps that were all landing and scoring points and then every now and then drop hard power shots to the ribs and head, then he would go back to scoring points with what seemed like hundreds of bee stings. Periban was continually going from head to body beautifully with left and right-hooks to the head and body as well as uppercuts from all different angles. Periban overwhelmed Naugler and couldn’t miss putting a beating on his opponent.
Naugler was coming forward swinging wildy with haymakers landing every now and then to no avail and that is how the whole fight way until at 1:30 of the fifth Periban threw a soft fifteen to twenty punch unanswered flurry that prompted the referee to stop the fight for a TKO victory for Periban. Naugler kept screaming to the referee and anybody that would listen that he was okay and not hurt but when you don’t answer a fifteen punch flurry, the referee has no choice but to stop the fight, it would have been over soon regardless.