Despite the official result being a knockout in the seventh round, there was no need for Jayson Vayson to be taken to the hospital on Saturday night. Other than a swollen left eye – the product of right hooks from the unified strawweight champion Oscar Collazo – it was just another night in the ring at Fantasy Springs Casino in Indio, California
The absence of significant damage to the skillful-yet-little-known Filipino contender Vayson had many wondering why the corner elected to halt the fight in the seventh round of what was Vayson’s first title shot and Collazo’s sixth title defense. Collazo, who had put Vayson down in the first, was hurt to the body in the fourth round but had regained control of the fight by a growing margin. The final sequence showed Collazo landing a heavy left hand and a combination to the body, which Vayson answered with a slapping left hook, followed by the referee Thomas Taylor stepping in at the 1:41 mark.
“My corner thought I was breaking – I wanted to fight,” Vayson, 27, said afterwards, before stressing that he respected his corner’s concern for his safety.
The disbelief from boxing fans was embodied in the words of one of the DAZN commentators, who said: “Every single person in that corner needs to be fired.”
Brico Santig, the co-manager and promoter of Vayson, explained that the decision came down to wanting to keep their fighter safe for future opportunities. He said that, while he felt Vayson wasn’t in immediate danger, there were some troubling signs – like poor balance – observed by himself and head trainer Allan Alegria, a long-time former pro.
“He was not totally hurt but he was out of balance,” Santig told BoxingScene. “In the last seconds he was hit in the side. And of course the thought of the corner is, if given the chance for a follow-up, one, two, three, four, five blows, it will be a disaster; it will be a knockout. Before that happens, the team made a decision
“Sometimes his foot is not stable; sometimes even he was hit with little power, he’s staggered.”
Santig added that the referee had been to the corner during the break during the previous two rounds to see if Vayson was good to continue, and said that the commission’s corner inspector had asked three times during the fight whether to stop the fight – the third time prompting the stoppage.
“The referee asked me and asked the corner in the last two rounds, ‘Is Vayson OK?’,” said Santig, who has worked with Vayson for nearly a decade. “‘Yes, he’s OK,’ I said. In the last round, he asks coach, ‘Is Vayson OK?’ You can ask your boxer. I said ‘OK, he must go on’. In the last rounds the ring supervisor under the commission, he goes ‘Coach, what do you think? Do we need to stop the fight?’. The third time, when he sees a solid blow, then of course the team decided to stop it.”
Taylor told the Daily Tribune that he had spoken with Vayson’s corner between rounds because he had observed Vayson taking more punches than in previous rounds, but was told that their fighter was able to continue. “For me, the corner knows their fighter better than anybody, so I will never second guess a cornerman about wanting to stop a fight,” Taylor said.
Alegria added that he felt “they pressured us” with the constant inquiries about Vayson’s readiness to continue, but says he agreed with the idea of saving the fighter from Veruela, Agusan del Sur, Philippines for future opportunities.
“I don’t want my boxer to be damaged,” Allegria, who compiled a record of 37-14-3 (24 KOs) in a career from 1981 to 1998, told BoxingScene. “The boxer also wants to finish the rounds, but if he is damaged, that’s a problem.
“That’s why I said maybe that’s enough, because I don’t want damage for him. Because this is not the only fight. We can give a good fight again. If the boxer is damaged, that’s a big problem.”
Though the DAZN commentators scored the fight even at 47-47 through five, the official judges had Collazo winning handily via scores of 59-54 after six.
In defeat, Vayson fell to 14-2-1 (8 KOs), ending a four-fight winning streak that included a second round stoppage of the former WBO strawweight champion Ryuya Yamanaka. His only previous loss came two years ago, when he was shut out by the former WBA flyweight champion Seigo Yuri Akui in Japan; his draw came in 2019 against future IBF strawweight titleholder Rene Mark Cuarto.
Allegria said that believes Vayson can still be a world champion, but wants future opportunities to instead take place at 108lbs, and added that Vayson could only eat fruit and soup for the final two weeks in his struggles to make 105lbs for the first time since 2018.
