SAN ANTONIO – The greatest victory of New York City welterweight Luis Collazo’s career thus far has been a controversial decision loss to WBC titlist Andre Berto in 2009, and Monday night against Californian Alan Sanchez, Collazo fought like a man about whom that can rightly be said.
The main event from Cowboys Dancehall, a second installment of the early week boxing schedule Fox Sports 1 recently kicked-off and a collaboration between Golden Boy Promotions and Leija-Battah Promotions, was a 10-round welterweight fight that represented the least of its nine-match card – starting, continuing and ending as a lusterless sparring session in which neither man was imperiled and Collazo relied on two of the distinct features that keep his generally unremarkable fights on television: His hometown and tattoos.
Collazo (34-5, 17 KOs) defeated Sanchez (12-3-1, 6 KOs) by unanimous scores of 99-91, 98-92 and 97-93, using his crafty southpaw style to subdue both the light-hitting Sanchez and the Texas crowd. Without a round onto which a marker might be placed, with, in other words, round 4 being the same as round 7 being the same as round 10, Collazo’s third win in two years was cautious to a point of being incautious: A fighter with Collazo’s record and aspirations must not squander television dates the way he did Monday night.
RAUL MARTINEZ VS. DANIEL QUEVADO
If it cannot be said the career of San Antonio junior featherweight Raul Martinez is in upswing, after “La Cobrita’s” Monday victory over California’s Daniel Quevado things might nevertheless be better than they appeared four months ago when Martinez was soundly beaten at Alamodome by a fighter with a losing record.
After the opening three rounds of Monday’s match, Martinez (30-3, 18 KOs), who appeared early not to have power enough to keep Quevado (13-14-3, 8 KOs) at bay, began to walk the larger Californian into punches, connecting with several of the match’s most meaningful blows at the end of the third.
Then after nearly three minutes of unsustained offense in which neither man had a decisive advantage, in the final seconds of round 4 Martinez buckled Quevado, this time with a 3-2 combo. Immediately afterwards, Quevado, who’d spent much of the previous six minutes moving his right arm in a winding motion while throwing nary a punch with it, told his corner he was unable to continue, citing his right shoulder and awarding Martinez a victory officially scored TKO-5.
That Martinez won by knockdown was important for his future, after his April loss in a four-round match. That Martinez appeared slower and less powerful at his new weight, and absorbed blows aplenty from a .500 fighter like Quevado, though, leaves a number of doubts about that very same future.
RAU’SHEE WARREN VS. OMAR GONZALEZ
Officially, Cincinnati’s Rau’shee Warren’s made-for-television showcase match was a lopsided decision that came after Warren dropped his opponent, San Antonio junior featherweight Omar Gonzalez, five times. In actuality, though, the fight had more suspenseful moments than its score would imply and decidedly more than Warren or his handlers anticipated.
In the second television bout of Monday’s fight card, Warren (7-0, 3 KOs) decisioned Gonzales (6-10, 1 KO) by unanimous scores of 60-49, 60-49 and 60-51. Despite hurling, and landing, a multitude of left crosses from his southpaw stance, though, Warren was not able to stop Gonzales, and collected a fair number of counter left hands himself.
After a truly shaky start, an opening round that found him dropped twice by counters, Gonzales applied himself more effectively in the second, giving nearly as good, if not accurately, as he got from his three-time Olympian opponent. The third saw Gonzales land the round’s more powerful punches, straightening-up Warren several times with right-hook counters thrown from the San Antonian’s southpaw stance.
The entirety of the match’s momentum changed in the fourth, however, as Warren made the puncher’s compact – let’s both hit each other and see what happens – and landed accurate punches enough to fell Gonzales. An adjustment between rounds, too, convinced Warren he could not miss with left-hand leads, and then he did not miss.
Warren’s rhythm did not sustain, though, and the fifth was a far closer round than its predecessor, leading to a sixth that saw Warren return to form and drop Gonzales twice more, this time with increasingly vicious shots that knocked Gonzales down with considerably greater force. The decision brought no suspense but did come at the end of a prizefight that reiterated a number of lingering questions about Warren’s power and defense, the sorts of questions a man with a losing record should not be allowed to ask a top prospect with Warren’s resume.
UNDERCARD
The seventh fight of the card, a match between local junior middleweight Jairo Castaneda (3-0, 1 KO) and Austin’s Warren Stewart (0-2), delighted the filled-in Cowboys Dancehall crowd, with Castaneda securing his career’s third victory by three scores of 40-36, but also showed Castaneda to be a fighter whose chin is inappropriately high in exchanges and whose right crosses need improved power if their thrower is to become more than a local attraction.
Monday’s final pre-television bout, one featuring two Texas middleweights, Austin’s Kenton Sippio-Cook (3-0, 3 KOs) and Brownsville’s Juan Manuel Reyna (4-2, 2 KOs), saw a spirited round and a half followed by an odd ending, when Sippio-Cook landed a low blow from which Reyna was unable to rise, at 2:08 of round 2, after five minutes of attempted recuperation. While the official result was announced as a technical knockout for Sippio-Cook, this will have to be reviewed by Texas officials – as a referee who believed a knockdown to be scored by a clean punch would not give a fighter five minutes to recover.
Before that, two Texas flyweights threw heartily at one another in a four-round female match that saw Laredo’s Christina Fuentes (2-3-3) decision Houstonian Paola Ortiz (0-1) by unanimous scores of 39-37, 39-37 and 40-36.)
Monday’s second fight saw a massive mismatch in fighter weights if not class, as two Texas heavyweights, Austin’s Aaron Rosa (0-0-2), who weighed 256, and Brownsville’s Juan Manuel Alvarez (0-0-1), who weighed 200.4, made battle for four rounds, mutually assaulting and tiring one another and scoring a majority draw the ringside judges had 40-36, 38-38 and 38-38.
The night’s opening match between two Texan junior lightweights, Houston’s Rogelio Moreno (1-1) and San Antonio’s Christian Santibanez (0-2), one that featured Moreno’s activity against Santibanez’s reach and flying chin, ended with a unanimous decision for Moreno by scores of 39-37, 39-37 and 40-36.
Opening bell rang on a half-filled Cowboys Dancehall at 6:38 PM local time.
