By Michael Rosenthal
CARSON, California – Former two-division champion Robert Guerrero, 35, stopped Hevinson Herrera after five rounds on the undercard of the Shawn Porter-Yordenis Ugas card Saturday at Dignity Health Sports Park.
Guerrero stalked Herrera from the opening bell, controlling the fight and landing hard punches periodically. In the fifth round, a big left sent Herrera sprawling to the canvas but he was able to get up and survive the round.
That was that, however. Herrera didn’t come out for the start of the sixth round and the fight was stopped.
Guerrero (35-6-1, 20 knockouts) was coming off a second-round knockout of Adam Mate in December but lost his three fights before that in 2016 and 2017, to Danny Garcia, David Peralta and Omar Figueroa Jr.
Herrera (24-17-1, 18 KOs) has lost five of his last seven fights.
In other fights on the card, former secondary featherweight titleholder Jesus Cuellar (29-3, 21 KOs) of Argentina stopped Carlos Padilla (16-11-1, 10 KOs) of Colombia 34 seconds into the second round of a scheduled eight-round lightweight bout.
Mexican featherweight prospect Issac Avelar (16-0, 11 KOs) defeated Juan Antonio Lopez (13-6, 5 KOs) of Dallas by a unanimous decision in an action-packed eight-round bout. The scores were 77-75, 77-75 and 78-74.
Viktor Slavinskyi (8-0-1, 4 KOs) of Ukraine defeated Luis May (21-13-1) of Mexico by a unanimous decision in a six-round junior lightweight fight. May was shut out on two cards and won one round on the third.
And lightweight prospect Rolando Romero (8-0, 7 KOs) of Las Vegas needed only 62 seconds and a big right to stop Nicolas Velazquez (10-5, 3 KOs of Argentina in a scheduled six-rounder.
