Regis Prograis stopped Jose Zepeda 59 seconds into the 11th round to win the vacant WBC 140-pound title Saturday at Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson, California.
Prograis (28-1, 24 KOs) had dominated the fight between southpaws, outboxing and outworking an overmatched Zepeda (35-3, 27 KOs).
The now-two-time junior welterweight beltholder picked Zepeda apart from a distance and Zepeda, making his third attempt to win a major title, never adjusted.
Finally, about a minute into Round 11, Prograis hurt Zepeda with an overhand left and followed with a barrage of hard shots that put Zepeda down.
And that was enough for referee Ray Corona, who stopped the fight without counting.
You can read a full report on the fight here.
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Yokasta Valle (27-2, 9 KOs) of Costa Rica became a three-division titleholder by outpointing unified junior flyweight champ Evelin Bermudez (17-1-1, 6 KOs) of Argentina in a 10-round bout.
Two judges had Valle winning, 99-91 and 97-93. The third scored it 95-95.
The spirited fight was evenly contested in spite of the one-sided scores, as both boxers threw punches almost nonstop. However, the judges evidently believed that Valle was somewhat busier and landed the cleaner shots.
Valle entered the fight as a unified strawweight champion. She also was an atomweight titleholder
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Heavyweight prospect Bakhodir Jalolov, the 2020 Olympic champion from Uzbekistan, knocked out grossly overmatched Curtis Harper (14-9, 9 KOs) of Jacksonville, Florida, in the fourth round of a scheduled 10-rounder.
The official time of the stoppage was 1:53.
Jalolov, a skillful, 6-foot-7 southpaw, has now stopped all 12 of his professional opponents.
He put Harper down with a straight left to the chin in the final seconds of Round 3. Then he went for the kill in Round 4, unloading a series of ill-tended power shots.
Harper finally went down under a barrage of punches. He got up but referee Thomas Taylor decided he could no longer continue and stopped the fight.
Jalolov now fights out of Brooklyn, New York.
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Junior middleweight contender Charles Conwell (18-0, 13 KOs) of Cleveland survived a first-round cut above his left eye to defeat veteran Juan Carlos Abreu (25-7-1, 23 KOs) of the Dominican Republic by a majority decision in a 10-round bout.
The official scores were 98-92 and 96-94 and 95-95. Boxing Junkie scored it 97-93 for Conwell, seven rounds to three.
Conwell, a 2016 U.S Olympian, rocked the rugged Abreu many times but was unable to put him away in a brutal bout that was fought mostly on the inside.
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Fernando Vargas Jr., the son of the former world champion of the same name, put Alejandro Martinez (3-3-1, 2 KOs) of Los Angeles down twice and stopped him in the second round of a scheduled six-rounder in the first televised/streamed fight on the card.
Vargas, a junior middleweight prospect from Oxnard, California, has stopped all seven of his opponents as a professional.
The elder Vargas, now 44, has three sons – Fernando, Amado and Emiliano – who fight professionally and are trained by him. They have a combined record of 14-0 (11 KOs).
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Former beltholder Regis Prograis and longtime contender Jose Zepeda will fight for a vacant 140-pound title on pay-per-view tonight (Saturday) in Carson, California.
The main portion of the show begins at 9 p.m. ET / 6 p.m. PT. The main event will take place later in the show.
Boxing Junkie will post results of the main event and other featured bouts immediately afterward. Simply return to this post and refresh when the time comes.
Full coverage – a fight story, photo gallery and analysis – will follow on separate posts the night of the fight and the following day.
Enjoy the fights!
