By Mark Vester

Fulgencio Zuniga (20-2, 17KOs) stunned insiders and a wild crowd at the Emerald Queen Casino in Tacoma, Washington by stopping undefeated knockout artist Victor Oganov (26-1, 26KOs) in the ninth round to capture the vacant IBO super middleweight title.

The first round saw Zuniga come out with a fury by throwing a high volume of punches to the head and body of Oganov. Sweeping uppercuts and fast jabs seemed to catch Oganov at will. The ref called a knockdown in the first round when Zuniga went flying back to ropes after being off-balance from an exchange of power punches. The logic is the ropes kept Zuniga from falling, prompting the ref to begin a standing eight count. Far from a clean knockdown. Fans and ringside observers showered the call with boos.

Zuniga kept going with the high volume of punches and would sometimes land five to six punches in a row without a single counter in return. Oganov showed very little head movement and was very slow with his punches, but would stun Zuniga every time he was able to land a flush powershot.

Oganov and Zuniga clashed heads in the fourth, which opened a cut above the left eye of Oganov.  When Zuniga sensed danger, he would move to his left after landing combinations to keep Oganov from following up. By the sixth, Zuniga began to come forward and push Oganov back with punches. At this point, Oganov was bleeding from the left eye, his nose and his mouth was wide open as he looked to catch his breath.

In the eight round, Oganov was barely punching back and showing any will to win in the first minute. The last two of the round saw him go for broke as he jumped on Zuniga with power punches and stayed on him as the crowd stood on their feet to watch both men exchange big punches.

In the ninth, a massive left hook bomb sent Oganov down for the first time in his career and flat on his back. Oganov barely made it back up and Zuniga quickly jumped on him with more than a half dozen punches against the ropes as Oganov was defenseless, badly hurt and ready to go down for the second time as the ref jumped in to stop the fight.

Zuniga was up 78-73 on all three official cards at the time of the stoppage.

Zuniga's only two defeats came at the hands of Daniel Santos (decision) and Kelly Pavlik (TKO in 9, 2005).

In the co-feature, undefeated junior middleweight James Kirkland (20-0, 17 KOs) walked through the overmatched Mohammad Said (22-6-1, 14 KOs) in less than two rounds.

Said was in trouble as soon as the fight began as he was dropped by Kirkland's high volume of incoming  bombs. Moments later he was dropped for the second time in the round and immediately abandoned the will to win and began initiate his survival instincts. He was able to get himself out of the first round, but caught more hard leather in the second as he was dropped for the full count.

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