Melindo vs Meneses, Domingo vs Navarro on October 3

By Ronnie Nathanielsz

ALA boys Milan Melindo and Michael Domingo will battle Mexican opponents on the undercard of the Drian Francisco- Roberto Alvarez fight card at the Cuneta Astrodome on October 3.

Undefeated minimum weight Melindo (10-0, 5 KO’s)  who is the WBA Intercontinental light flyweight champion and the WBO Asia Pacific minimum weight champion will take on Ivan Meneses (14-5-1, 8 KO’s) while WBO Oriental bantamweight champion Domingo (38-14-2, 16 KO’s) will face former US Olympian, southpaw Jose Navarro (26-4, 12 KO’s) in two attractive supporting bouts to the main event.

In the main event, the undefeated super flyweight  Francisco (17-0-1, 13 KO’s) meets the tough Panamanian contender in a battle for the WBA International title. Vasquez who has a record of  27-3 with 20 knockouts has fought some really solid opponents.

ALA Gym patron Tony Aldeguer said that Melindo and Domingo had been training hard and both had scheduled fights postponed or called off. Melindo was supposed to fight Denver Cuello on the Brian Viloria – Jesus Iribe “Island  Assault” card in Honolulu last August 29 but that fight was reportedly never on the card while Domingo’s October 4 fight was called off to enable him to fight Navarro in the Cuneta Astrodome fight card.

The 21 year old Melindo is coming off a unanimous ten round decision over former IBF world champion Muhammad Rachman of Indonesia last March 14 while the 30 year old Domingo’s last fight was a unanimous ten round decision over Monico Laurente also on the same card.

Meneses on the other hand was held to a ten round draw in his last fight against Mario Rodriguez last August 21 following a ten round unanimous decision over Jose Figueroa. Prior to that Menses scored a 2nd round knockout over Sergio D iaz on November 21, 2008.

The southpaw Navarro lost a close split decision to Cristian Mijares, the accomplished Mexican former world champion in a WBC super flyweight title bout on February 16, 2008 and is eager to get back into the ring and show what he can do.

Navarro, a stylish boxer fought four times for world titles and lost all four. On January 3, 2005 he lost what was widely regarded as a bum decision in Tokyo to Japan’s Katsushige Kawashima with one judge scoring every round for Navarro while the two other judges scored it for the Japanese by scores of 115-114 and 115-113.

The American then dropped a unanimous decision to WBC champion Masamori Tokuyama on February 27, 2006 before losing another twelve round decision to IBF super flyweight  champion Dimitri Kirilov on October 13, 2007.