MatchroomHOUSTON, Texas – Omari Jones eased to his seventh professional victory when he inflicted the first defeat of Diego Zuniga’s career on the undercard of O’Shaquie Foster-Raymond Ford.
The promising junior middleweight dropped Zuniga in the opening round at the Fertitta Center and thereafter convincingly outboxed him while earning three scores of 80-71 without ever again threatening the stoppage.
He perhaps fought with increased aggression in an attempt to do so but Zuniga, 30 years old and previously undefeated, proved a resilient opponent, even if he was one lacking in ambition.
It was a right-left hand combination that dropped Zuniga, who immediately returned to his feet and who Jones rightly detected wasn’t sufficiently hurt that it would have served him to apply increased pressure.
Repeated, strong right hands were admirably absorbed throughout the second, after which the 23-year-old Jones resumed boxing with patience. A left uppercut caught the eye in the third and a right hand backed Zuniga up in the fourth, but still he convincingly remained upright.
Successive right hands again made an impression in the seventh, but it took until the eighth and final round, after two further overhand rights and later another left hand, that Jones again forced Zuniga to retreat. That it was again a left hand that hurt him, as it also was in the first, prompted the question about why Jones hadn’t thrown more of them against an opponent he was so convincingly beating, but he will likely reflect positively on the reality that for the second successive fight he has confidently paced himself for eight rounds.
His promoters, Matchroom, intend on matching him twice more before the conclusion of 2026 – once in his home city of Orlando – in a demonstration of their high hopes for him. Another of their prospects, the 21-year-old Zaquin Moses, had by then outpointed Travis Crawford, 23, over six rounds via three scores of 60-54.
