LAS VEGAS – Israel Madrimov was entitled to a challenge lesser than the past two bouts that required every bit of his talent and energy, and in that moment Saturday night, the former 154lbs titleholder breathed easy while cruising to victory.
Madrimov, 11-2-1 (7 KOs), treated Dominican Republic opponent Luis David Salazar like a glorified sparring partner, winning by three 99-91 scorecards and moving back toward the path of title contention.
“Exactly what he needed – he got the work and looked good,” Madrimov manager Vadim Kornilov told BoxingScene after the bout.
Madrimov came to Saturday’s bout at Fontainebleau Las Vegas on the heels of back-to-back merciless challenges while losing unanimous decisions to five-division champion Terence Crawford and WBC interim junior middleweight belt holder Vergil Ortiz Jnr.
A former WBA 154lbs titlist from Uzbekistan, Madrimov immediately backed up Salazar with a hard left in the first round, then pummeled him in opposite corners during the second.
As Crawford had done to him, Madrimov turned southpaw in the fourth round and found success landing power punches with both hands, keeping his opponent in a submissive state.
In the sixth, Madrimov’s left eye area blackened from a punch and he was back to an orthodox stance, testing his endurance after he had been hampered by bronchitis/pneumonia damage to his lungs during the past year.
Despite the eye swelling, Madrimov cracked Salazar with heavy head shots in the ninth.
The abuse was even more substantial in the 10th as Madrimov battered Salazar throughout the final minute, leaving him on wobbly legs and badly woozy at the final bell.
Kornilov said Madrimov is in position to fight all the big names in the stout junior middleweight division later this year, including Jaron “Boots” Ennis and IBF titlist Bakhram Murtazaliev.
Earlier on the undercard of Saturday’s IBF lightweight title main event pitting belt holder Raymond Muratalla and Olympic gold medalist Andy Cruz, Omari Jones – a 2024 U.S. Olympic bronze medalist from Orlando, Florida – sought to extend his career-opening run of knockouts by dropping Jerome Baxter in the first round and repeatedly landing heavy blows on his foe before settling for his first victory on the scorecards.
The 23-year-old Jones, 5-0 (4 KOs), eased to the junior middleweight triumph by three scores of 60-53.
With his cousin Shakur Stevenson looking on at ringside, 20-year-old lightweight Zaquin Moses scored a knockdown and cruised to a unanimous decision by three 60-53 scorecards over Argentina’s Leandro Medina.
After Stevenson urged his cousin to “keep boxing” before the fourth round, the 20-year-old Moses, 6-0 (3 KOs), hammered Medina with a left to the head to drop him and continued the attack, cutting Medina at the right eye.
Medina, 7-3-1 (4 KOs), hung on, but a Moses family member in the crowd summarized the final minutes: “That kid’s too slow, he’s done.”
Las Vegas junior welterweight prospect Kaipo Gallegos, 19, brought an energetic hometown crowd to the theater, along with his own dynamic punching prowess, stopping Angola’s Wilson Akinocho with an unanswered flurry of punches as Akinocho was backed to his own corner.
The stoppage came 1 minute and 52 seconds into the second for Gallegos, 11-0-1 (9 KOs).
Cuban southpaw Ronny Alvarez, 6-0 (5 KOs), dominated en route to a sixth-round TKO of Uruguay’s Braulio Matias, 7-3 (2 KOs), in the card’s opener.
Super middleweight Alvarez, 21, scored a fifth-round knockdown of Matias, and as the punishment wore on in the sixth, Matias was struck by a one-point deduction for holding by referee Robert Hoyle, who warned him, “You’ve got to show me something.”
When Matias held again, Hoyle waved the fight off at the 1:18 mark.
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.
