Óscar Valdez knocked out Miguel Berchelt in the tenth round of the CMB super featherweight championship fight, on a billboard held in the bubble at the MGM Grand Conference Center in Las Vegas.
Berchelt (38-1, 34 KOs) won the title by defeating Francisco Vargas with an exciting knockout in the eleventh round in 2017 and defended the belt six times until losing tonight.
Valdez (28-0, 22 KOs) is a former world featherweight champion who defeated Matías Carlos Adrián Roda in 2016 to win the OMB belt and made six consecutive defenses, including an epic battle with Scott Quigg in that Valdez suffered a jaw fracture in the fifth round, but ended the fight to win by unanimous decision. Valdez gained weight in 2019 and has technical knockout victories over Adam Lopez and Jayson Velez at 130 pounds.
Valdez remains undefeated in championship fights.
Here are all the results of the billboard Berchelt-Valdez:
Flowers gets impressive knockout on Velez
Gabriel Flores Jr. he is not known as a powerful hitter, but he proved it at the conclusion of his junior lightweight fight on Miguel Berchelt-Oscar Valdez’s previous billboard Saturday night at the MGM Conference Center in Las Vegas.
Flowers (20-0, 7 KOs) dropped the hammer on Jayson Velez of Puerto Rico (29-8-1, 21 KOs), and sent him to the canvas with a left hook in the sixth round , then finish it off with a burst along the strings at 1:47 p.m. It was the first knockout of Flowers in seven appearances since 2015.
The final sequence of blows apparently came out of nowhere. Flowers was clearly winning, but he hadn’t shown much aggression. He had a visible speed advantage over Vélez and was using that speed to hit him with the jab and counterattack effectively every time Vélez approached.
That changed almost in the middle of the sixth, when Flowers staggered to Velez with the left hook. Velez could not hide the fact that he was injured, his whole body leaned forward and fell to the canvas. He got back on his feet, but was still unbalanced and seemed unstable even when referee Tony Weeks resumed action. Flowers lowered it again moments later, and that was it.
Vélez, 32, came back against the wall after suffering consecutive defeats in 2020 against Jaume Arbreda and Oscar Valdez. Valdez knocked out Velez in the tenth round of his fight in July.
For Flores, who fights in Stockton, California, it was the high-profile result he was looking for. Saturday marked just the second scheduled 10-round bout in the Flowers race. He signed with Top Rank when he was 16 years old.
Falcao remains undefeated at the expense of Akavov
Dodge Falcao, from Brazil, kept his record immaculate with a knockout in the fourth round over Russian middleweight Artur Akavov.
Akavov’s corner stopped the fight at the conclusion of the fourth assault, after informing officers of vision loss in his left eye and an apparent broken nose. It was an expected result as Akavov (20-4, 9 KOs) had become an easy target for Falcao’s shots from the second round.
Falcao (28-0, 20 KOs) quietly dominated the ring, put his opponent on the ropes and sewed him up with sharp combinations. Outside of an aggressive first assault, Akavov’s offensive basically ceased to exist, he didn’t look comfortable responding to Falcao’s punches against the ropes and rarely fired more than once at a time.
Falcao mixed his blows to his body and head well. Akavov routinely shook his head as if to suggest that the blows were not coming, but it was obvious that Falcao was wearing it out efficiently.
An Olympic silver medalist in 2012, Falcao went 2-0 up in 2020, fighting exclusively in Brazil.
Rodriguez completes the route for the first time in front of Verón
Junior welterweight Elvis Rodriguez was forced to claim his first victory on the cards on Saturday, though that may not have been the worst for his development.
The 25-year-old boxer made a decision in eight rounds on Luis Albert Veron with scores of 79-73, 79-73 and 78-74. This is the first time that Rodríguez has completed the assaults agreed upon in his two years of professional career. Rodriguez (11-0-1, 10 KOs), who trains with Freddie Roach Hall of Fame, was patient at first against his more experienced opponent and began to make a difference in the fifth and sixth rounds, while connecting blows to the body and a clean right hook. He managed to hurt Veron (18-3-2, 9 KOs) at the end of the sixth.
The difference in power was visible from the start and became more pronounced as the fight progressed. In the last two rounds Veron’s face showed blue and swelling under the left eye. It wasn’t the brightest performance of Rodriguez’s career, but it provided him with valuable learning and kept his record intact.
Veron has suffered three defeats in his last four professional fights.
Zayas dominates Martin
Xander Zayas, one of Top Rank’s most prized prospects, continues to progress and now completely dominated James Martin during six rounds in his welterweight clash.
Zayas (7-0, 5 KOs), from San Juan, Puerto Rico, set the tone for the fight with strong left hooks on the body, followed by combinations at the head. Martin (6-2, 1 KO), a 23-year-old Philadelphia fighter, showed heart and responded with intent, but Zayas ’defensive skills proved to be just as impressive as his offense. Every day he slipped out of danger and responded with blows to Martin’s abdomen.
The 18-year-old welterweight failed to record a knockout for the first time in four appearances, but that doesn’t demerit his performance because he had a lot of unanswered punches against the ropes near the end of the assault quarter and went hurting Martin with a right wing in the fifth, though he was never in danger of being knocked down.
Zayas, who signed with Top Rank since the age of 16, got the second victory of his career in Las Vegas. This was his first appearance in the Top Rank bubble, after he fought in Florida in the second half of 2020.
Martinez dispatches Wagner in the first round
Middleweight prospect Javier Martinez did a quick job with Billy Wagner, of, getting a technical knockout in the 1:15 minutes of the first round.
Martinez (3-0, 1 KO), 25, shook Wagner (3-2, 1 KO), 28, with a right-handed counterattack, which was declared a fall after Wagner was up against the ropes. Moments later Martinez connected another monstrous right and a straight left in the middle, then Wagner’s corner threw in the towel at the very moment the judge stopped the fight.
Martinez’s victory was the third in nine months.
First knockout for Rosary
Omar Rosario got the first knockout of his career by knocking down Uriel Villanueva with a left hook to the body at 02:38 minutes of the second round, from a scheduled four-round junior welterweight.
Rosario, (3-0, 1 KO), originally from Puerto Rico and who placed at number 21 of the late Roberto Clemente in his shorts, connected a precise right to the head of Villanueva in the first assault that was the best blow of the fight, but he defined it with a constant work on the body that returned him in the second round when he forced Villanueva (1-1) to kneel twice before the fight stopped.
Rosari, 23, became a professional in August 2020.
The rest of the billboard
Director (ESPN / ESPN +)
• Championship fight: Miguel Berchelt vs. Óscar Valdez, 12 rounds, for Berchelt’s CMB super featherweight title
• Gabriel Flores Jr. against Jayson Velez, 10 rounds, light junior weight