By Mark Vester
At the WaMu Theater in Madison Square Garden in New York City, Juan Manuel Lopez (28-0, 25KOs) stopped Steven Luevano (37-2-1, 15KOs) in the seventh round to capture the WBO featherweight champion.
A boxing match in the first. Lopez landed the harder, crisper punches during their exchanges. Luevano started working a good hard jab in the second. He was landing nice counters as Lopez was trying to land something big. Lopez ended the round with a hard combination. The third was more of a war. Lopez started to put a lot of pressure on Luevano, hitting him with combinations with both hands. Luevano stood his ground by fighting fire with fire but his punches were not strong enough to do a lot of damage. Lopez continued to outwork and outland Luevano in the fourth and fifth round. Luevano made it more of an inside fight in the fifth.
During the sixth, Luevano's left eye began to swell up bad. He was busting him up in the sixth. During the seventh, Lopez landed a hard combination of punches, started by an uppercut, to send Luevano down. He went down hard on his back and got back to his feet in bad shape. The ref quickly stopped the action.
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