By James Blears
The hurricane season came early to Cozumel in a wild rough house re-match between Humberto Soto and Fransico Lorenzo.
Determined to redeem himself Lorenzo bored in with a Joe Frazier style by cutting the distance to try to neutralize Soto's much longer reach. But he also got penalized for some rough tactics. Lorenzo hit Soto with three desperation low blows in the seventh to be deducted a point by referee Jay Nady. He was deducted another point in the eighth for holding.
Soto dropped Lorenzo with a superb short right hook and wobbled him with a left right combination, but ran out of time for a KO.
Soto was finding his range with hard long rights as early as round two and shook Lorenzo towards the end of the round. But after the low blows in the next, it got wilder when Lorenzo threw one well after the bell. Soto often let Lorenzo get in too close and catch him with short hard rights, but Soto's punches were crisper, harder and more accurate.
After the half way point Soto started to range find with quality longer range punches. Referee Nady warned Soto's corner about the rough house tactics after round seven. Lorenzo who's from the Dominican Republic and came to Mexico for the rematch was nothing if not game and opened the ninth with a big left hook to the head. Soto retaliated in kind and a real brawl developed at the bell with them haveing to be pulled apart.
Soto then wobbled Lorenzo with a big left hook and then a looping right, but Lorenzo cut the distance and tied him up.
Soto triumphed by scores of 118-108 and 117-109 twice, but got too much caught up in a vicious brawl to be able to end with the KO the Cozumel crowd so craved. Soto won no points with them for his fighting style, but it was enough plus his excellent condition, to avoid the walloping of last time.