Photo by Lucas Noonan / Premier Boxing Champions
In Friday night’s televised co-feature, Javier Fortuna (28-0-1, 20 KOs) defeated Brian Vasquez (34-2, 18 KOs) for the vacant WBA 130-pound title at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. The judges had it 116-112, 117-111 and 117-111 for Fortuna.
While the Dominican Fortuna didn’t make good on his promise to knock Vasquez out, the toe-to-toe action made for a fun fight and electrified the crowd.
Fortuna, with the Dominican flag draped over his body, became emotional after the fight as tears streamed out of his puffy right eye.
Fortuna came out fast in the opening round landing haymakers on Vasquez. What Fortuna lacks in defense, he more than makes up for it in his output of punches. Fortuna was simply too fast for the game Vasquez, who came to Brooklyn to looking for a fight.
In the second round, after Vasquez landed a big counter right hook to stop Fortuna in his tracks, Fortuna pointed to his chin and taunted Vasquez. Fortuna landed 237 punches to Vasquez’ 174.
Fortuna fought well off the ropes and rallied to swell Vasquez’ face by the end of the sixth round. Vasquez just could not find an answer for Fortuna’s aggressiveness.
In the non-televised undercard Marcus Browne (15-0, 11 KOs) defeated Cornelius White (21-4, 16 KOs) by a lopsided unanimous decision. The official scorecard was 98-92 and 99-91 x 2.
Browne, of Staten Island, New York, dominated the fight from beginning to end, and even had White hurt badly on the ropes in the fourth round, but the referee inexplicably called for a break in the action instead of starting the count on White. With White seemingly being out on his feet, the referee ushered Browne to a neutral corner and allowed White to recover.
Browne took another step closer to a world title shot in the light heavyweight division.
Undefeated heavyweight Keith Tapia (15-0, 10 KOs) brought the crowd up to its feet with a devastating eighth round knockout of Leo Pia (5-5-2, 2 KOS).
After a mostly uneventful fight where Tapia was dominating the action, Tapia unloaded a big left hook to stun Pia. While Pia was trying to regain composure, Tapia leaned in and hit Pia with one more left hook which ended the fight and had Pia on his back for more than 5 minutes while the doctor checked on him.
The ladies provided some of the most sizzling action of the evening. Heather Hardy improved to (13-0, 2KOs) with a split-decision victory over Noemi Bosques (8-3-2, 2 KOs). The scorecards were 77-75 and 79-73 for Hardy and 77-75 for Bosques.
Both women landed furious punches in the opening round, but Hardy controlled much of the action moving Bosques back with big body shots. The action did not let up for a single round as they traded power shots back and forth.
Hardy exploded in the fifth round with a combination of left hooks both upstairs and to the body which rocked Bosques. In the eighth and final round both women came out of their corners fighting as if they knew the fight was in hanging in the balance.
In an entertaining 6 round bout Wesley Ferrer (9-0, 5KOs) slugged his way to a majority decision victory over Jose Miguel Castro (4-4, 2 KOs). One judge scored it a draw 56-56 and the other officials scored it 58-54 57-55.
In his professional debut, Brooklyn’s Chris Colbert scored a very impressive second round TKO over Marquis Pierce 1-6.
A straight right hand dropped Pierce in the first round and nearly ended the fight. Colbert landed another big right hand in the second and the referee jumped in to stop the fight with 1:31 left.
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Header photo and slideshow photos by Marilyn Paulino/RBRBoxing
