By Ryan Burton

Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, Las Vegas - Former middleweight champion Peter "Kid Chocolate" Quillin (32-1) returned to the ring after a 21 month layoff to defeat the always tough Dashon Johnson (22-21-3) via unanimous decision. The rust was evident early on as both men landed punches. Johnson came on in the third as he buzzed Quillin with several hard shots to end the round.

Quillin finally got into his groove in the 5th and landed several big shots and had Johnson hurt before the bell sounded to end the round. Johnson had moments throughout the rest of the fight but Quillin landed the harder shots to seal the deal. The final scores were 78-74, 79-72, and 79-73 and didn't reflect how competitive the fight was.

The last time Quillin fought was in December 2015 when he was stopped in one round by Danny Jacobs. This was Quillin's first fight with Virgil Hunter in his corner.

In the opening night of the evening, super lightweight Josue Vargas (9-1) stopped Alexander Charneco (4-4) in four rounds.

Featherweight prospect Xavier Martinez was up next and improved to 9-0 with a 5th round stoppage of Jesus Aguinaga (5-6-2). After absorbing a lot of punishment, the fight was stopped after the 5th.

Jeison Rosario of the Dominican Republic beat Salim Larbi from pillar to post from the opening bell of their middleweight fight. With the 5th round knockout victory Rosario improved to 14-1 while Larbi's record fell to 18-8-1. Larbi went down twice from body shots and didn't get up from the second shot.

Later on tonight, David Benavidez will attempt to the youngest super middleweight champion eve when he faced Ronald Gavril for the WBC title that became vacant when former champion Badou Jack moved up to the light heavyweight division.