LAS VEGAS – Elijah Garcia’s descent from a No. 1 ranking continued Saturday night when he was upset in a majority decision by Roy Jones Jnr-trained Kevin Newman II.
The former WBA top-ranked middleweight Garcia has performed in a distracted manner over the past year-plus, and getting clocked late by an array of Newman punches sealed a major step backward.
Judges scored the bout 95-95, 98-92, 96-94 for Newman, 19-3-1, as Garcia lost for the second time in three fights.
Following his 2023 TKO of current WBA super middleweight titleholder Jose Armando Resendiz, Garcia, 22, has been on a wayward path, losing a split decision to Kyrone Davis in 2024 after missing weight and being the beneficiary of a split decision triumph over Terrell Gausha last year after getting knocked down in the first round.
Garcia’s star-crossed ways continued when he was a late arrival in Las Vegas because his car broke down on the Thursday drive over from Arizona.
Garcia’s punching prowess pressured Newman, allowing the 22-year-old to slow his foe, especially in the fifth and sixth rounds.
Garcia shrugged off a Newman uppercut in the seventh to crack him with two hard lefts, retaining control of the bout.
But Newman’s responses swayed the judges, and now Garcia’s future is murky at best.
Earlier at MGM Grand, PBC sent a pair of 20-year-old prospects to the undercard, and Phoenix featherweight Brayan Gonzalez showcased his promise with a fifth-round TKO of Mexico’s Brandon Medina at the 1-minute, 57-second mark.
Gonzalez, 5-0 (4 KOs), struck Medina, 7-5, with a hard left to the head, and when referee Alan Huggins was troubled by Medina’s response to another clean right, he stopped the bout.
Gonzalez’s pressure increased from the third round, and in the fifth, Medina increasingly grabbed on to Gonzalez to pause the abuse while raising questions about his interest in winning.
Las Vegas lightweight prospect Kaipo Gallegos, 12-0-1, weathered the scare of a third-round knockdown at the hands of Julian Gonzalez, 16-2-1, to post a unanimous decision victory by scores of 97-92, 97-92, 98-91.
Gallegos was dropped by a right hand flush to the face, desperately holding and surviving the round before getting hurt again in the fourth and fighting his way out of trouble.
The break before the fifth effectively refreshed the 20-year-old Gallegos, and his effective combinations and increased activity led him to sweep the remaining frames.
After being feted with a commemorative “trophy” PBC belt this week for participating in the first PBC card 11 years ago this month on NBC, former world titlist Robert Guerrero watched his son of the same name improve to 8-0 with a unanimous decision victory.
Guerrero, a 19-year-old 140lbs fighter, defeated Texas’ Rigoberto Rivera, 3-3, by scores of 39-36, 39-36, 38-37.
In the card’s opener, junior middleweight Cristian Cangelosi was docked with the first blemish on his record when he and Dallas’ Miguel Angel Hernandez battled to a split draw. Cangelosi, of Brooklyn, New York, is now 12-0-1.
Lance Pugmire is BoxingScene’s senior U.S. writer and an assistant producer for ProBox TV. Pugmire has covered boxing since the early 2000s, first at the Los Angeles Times and then at The Athletic and USA Today. He won the Boxing Writers’ Association of America’s Nat Fleischer Award in 2022 for career excellence.
