By Ronnie Nathanielsz
Banking on the support of WBC president Jose Sulaiman in his quest to have Fil-American Brian Viloria put his light flyweight title on the line in a mandatory defense and honing his skills for the opportunity, No.1 contender Juanito Rubillar scored a lopsided ten round decision late Saturday over Ronnie Canete at the Elorde Sports Complex in Paranaque.
It was more of a workout for the 29 year old southpaw who connected with several ripping body shots but lacked the power to drop Canete or put him away. Two of the three judges, scoring referee Ver Abainza and judge Epi Almeda scored a shutout 100-90 in favor of Rubillar while judge Salvador Lopez gave Canete one round to turn in a scorecard of 99-91.
With the win Rubillar improved to 38-9-7 with 17 KO’s while Canete dropped to 19-16-2 with 3 KO’s.
Canete appeared intent on surviving the ten rounds as he covered up and grappled with Rubillar and only occasionally threw a few punches raising serious questions among fight fans about whether Rubillar could take the title away from Viloria should the two meet for the crown.
A title shot is not a certainty since Viloria’s handlers appear inclined to allow Top Rank promoter Bob Arum to make the decisions as to who Viloria fights although the $150,000 offer of Rubillar’s manager Gabriel “Bebot” Elorde Jr was much more than Viloria earned in his title defense against former champion Jose Antonio Aguirre last month.
Elorde believes that there was no need for him to negotiate with Arum or even Viloria’s manager Gary Gittleson since Rubillar is the mandatory challenger and under WBC rules the champion has to give Rubillar a shot at the title.
In the most impressive performance of the night undefeated Rey Labao added the scalp of Roberto Moreno to his growing list of knockouts with a second round KO to bring his record to 7-0 with 6 KO’s. The lanky Labao dropped Moreno with a flurry of body shots in the opening round after a furious exchange and then nailed him for good with a wicked left to the body that saw Moreno double-up on the canvas, unable to beat the count. Moreno dropped to 9-11-3 with 2 KO’s.
