Golden Boy Promotions Fight Night Club returned to downtown Los Angeles for another installment of boxing matches. The series, which is aired live on Versus, is ever so popular in the Southern California area as the crowds are packed and enthusiastic about the matches.
In the first bout of the night, Juan Heraldez met Luis Tapia in a four round, junior welterweight bout. Heraldez, making his pro debut, ended the fight with :36 seconds left in the second round when the referee waved the fight off. Tapia dropped to 1-3.
The next bout featured two featherweights in John Wampash and Ricky Lopez. Lopez dropped Wampash two times in the second round and once in the fourth en route to a unanimous decision victory 39-34 on all three scorecards. Lopez improves to 6-0 with 2 knockouts while Wampash drops to 1-2-1 with 1 KO.
In the co-main event, David Rodela (14-1-3, 6 KO’s) met Gamalier “Gammy” Rodriguez (8-2-2, 4 KO’s) in a junior lightweight bout. In this six round affair, there were many huge exchanges in what was back and forth action throughout. The official scorecards did not do Gammy justice as he lost on all three 58-56, 59-55, 59-55.
The next bout was a junior bantamweight affair between Sergio Espinoza and David Gaspar. Gaspar showed a lot of heart getting up off of the campus in the 1st and the 3rd, nonetheless the judges, and rightfully so, gave the victory to Espinoza 58-54, 58-54, and 59-53. Espinoza improves to 17-5-1 with 5 knockouts while Gaspar drops to 10-3-1 with 7 knockouts.
In the main event, Abner Mares who is making a comeback from a serious eye injury, met Carlos Fulgencio in an 8 round junior featherweight bout. Mares showed no rust from the onset of the bout as he stunned and outmanned Fulgencio with an overwhelming amount of punches from all angles. Mares finished him off at 2:24 in the 6th round with a body shot that Fulgencio could not recover from. Mares improves to 19-0 with 12 knockouts while Fulgencio dropped to 11-4-1 with 7 knockouts.
The next installment of the Fight Night Club series will be Thursday, September 24 at the Nokia Center. On a separate note, Golden Boy’s “Golden Boy” Vicious Victor Ortiz was in attendance at the fight. While speaking with him, he informed me that his next bout will be on the Shane Mosley undercard, tentatively scheduled for December 5th.