By Mariano A. Agmi and Matt Richardson from FightNews at ringside
WBO jr. featherweight champion Juan Manuel Lopez (28-0, 25 KOs) dethroned WBO featherweight champion Steven Luevano (37-2-1, 15 KOs) with an impressibe seventh round TKO on Saturday night at the Madison Square Garden Theater in New York City. Juanma slowly and methodically broke down Luevano, finally flooring him in the seventh. Referee Benji Estevez at the :44 mark, not allowing Luevano to continue.
WBA featherweight champion Yuriorkis Gamboa,, (17-0, 15 KOs) destroyed IBF #7/WBO #10 Rogers Mtagwa (26-14-2, 18 KOs) in two rounds. Gamboa simply outclassed Mtagwa, florring him once in the first and twice in the second before the bout was waved off by referee Steve Smoger. Time was 2:35. In the previous fight, Mtagwa nearly upset Juanma Lopez, but he was never in the fight tonight.
“Ireland’s” John Duddy made an impressive return to Madison Square Garden, annihilating Juan Astorga in round one. The inaptly nick-named “Aztec Warrior” took a knee a minute into the first round after Duddy (28-1, 18 KOs) bounced a right hand off his head. A left hook to the body a few seconds later dropped Astorga (14-4-1, 9 KOs) again, and this time referee Wayne Kelly waived off the bout at 1:55 seconds of round one.
All Photos by AP /Gregory Payan