All Tiara Brown needed was a wake-up call Saturday night before she was able to put her featherweight title defense to bed.
Brown, making the first defense of her 126lbs belt against Emma Gongora at the Bayou Music Center in Houston, snapped out of a slow start to overtake the challenger and earn a wide unanimous decision.
Scores were 100-90 (twice) and 98-92 for Brown.
“I did want to close the show and get a stoppage for the fans,” Brown, 20-0 (11 KOs), said after the fight, “but Emma Gongora is very tough and she was game – and I’m with it.”
France’s Gongora, 10-4-1 (1 KO), hit the canvas running, all aggression and activity, snapping a short right hand upstairs and thumping away at the belt holder’s body. Brown tried to establish her jab, but Gongora closed the gap and let her hands go to smother the outside work that Brown prefers.
Gongora kept coming, and what she may have given away in effectiveness she initially made up for with volume and grit. But Brown began ramping up her output in the second and third rounds, and her punches were the sharper and heavier of the two fighters.
“She did outwork me in the first round,” Brown said. “And then I got slapped by my coach and I said, ‘OK, it’s time to work – it’s time to work.”
By the fifth, Brown had found an optimal distance and began landing combinations and hard left hooks that seemed to chip away at Gongora, whose nose trickled blood.
Brown, a 37-year-old Floridian who earned her belt with a split decision win over Australia’s Skye Nicolson in March, fully entered her comfort zone by the fight’s second half. She slipped punches and countered, led with her jab and soon began landing big right hands that – finally – backed up Gongora and took the remaining wind from her sails.
Asked if she thought her performance sent a message to the rest of the division, Brown said, “I think I put the world on notice when I beat Skye Nicolson. For this here belt, I was a major underdog.”
And now?
“I want all the belts. Whoever, I’m ready.”
Jason Langendorf is the former Boxing Editor of ESPN.com, was a contributor to Ringside Seat and the Queensberry Rules, and has written about boxing for Vice, The Guardian, Chicago Sun-Times and other publications. A member of the Boxing Writers Association of America, he can be found at LinkedIn and followed on X and Bluesky.
