PALM DESERT, California – God apparently spoke, and Joel Iriarte was left with no choice.

A day after Golden Boy Promotions’ unbeaten welterweight prospect Iriarte missed weight following training-camp sickness, his planned Friday opponent at Acrisure Arena – Texas’ Jirah De Los Santos – decided not to move forward with the fight after saying he had “a religious experience.”

Iriarte, of Bakersfield, California, missed Thursday’s 147lbs weight limit by stepping on the scales at 150.

But the sides struck an agreement to fight if both came in under the Friday rehydration limit of 162lbs. Iriarte weighed 161, and De Los Santos, 14-2-2, was at 158 – but he later backed off.

“Everyone has their own religion and experiences,” Iriarte said. “He said God spoke to him. I’ve never had [an opponent] say they’ve had that. We were both here and both put in the work and could fight. … I was pretty bummed out. But it is what it is.”  

Iriarte may return on the February 21 Ryan Garcia card in Las Vegas.   

Other undercard action took place on the undercard of welterweight contender Raul Curiel’s DAZN main-event bout at Acrisure Arena versus replacement for Jordan Panthen, however.

With Golden Boy setting 2024 Olympian Ruslan Abdullaev on the fast track toward 140lbs title contention, the Uzbekistan fighter showed why by stopping Uruguay’s Eduardo Abreu on a powerful combination of punches with Abreui on the ropes and 1 second left in the fifth round.

Abdullaev, 23, knocked down Abreu 14-2-2 twice before that, first with a left hand to the head in the third round.

In just his fourth pro bout, Abdullaev, 4-0, then further softened up Abreu with damaging body shots in the fourth and dropped him again with a sudden combination in the fifth before the fight was waved off seconds later.

Cayden Griffiths, an unbeaten junior middleweight from nearby Coachella, opened the DAZN portion of the card by battering but not finishing Nicaragua’s Lesther Espino.

Judges awarded Griffiths, 19, a unanimous decision victory by three scores of 60-53.

Griffiths, 7-0, knocked down Espino with a left hammered to the ribcage in the second round, leading to more punishment delivered through exchanges in the third. Griffiths was wailing away more in the fourth and fifth, shrugging off Espino’s counters to increase the punishment as the fifth closed.

“We’ll take it as a learning experience. He’s a good fighter,” said Griffiths, who stopped his first six opponents.

Junior bantamweight John “Scrappy” Ramirez, of Los Angeles, pulled out a majority decision victory over Byron Rojas by scores of 95-95, 97-93, 98-92.

Ramirez, 16-1, dropped Rojas to 29-6-3.

Middleweight Fabian Guzman planted several unanswered hard right hands to the head and body to produce a sixth-round TKO victory over Ecuador’s Jose Rodriguez to remain unbeaten after nine bouts.

The fight was stopped at the 2-minute, 36-second mark of the sixth as Rodriguez’s responses decreased.

Guzman, 22, from Orange, California, posted a fourth-round knockdown en route to the triumph, moving to 9-0 with eight knockouts, while Rodriguez dropped to 3-2.

In the opening bout, Los Angeles welterweight Ricardo Ruvalcaba, 15-0-1, defeated veteran Jonathan Eniz, of Argentina, by scores of 79-73, 80-72, 80-72, dropping Eniz to 37-25-1.

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.