Yair Gallardo eviscerated Carlos Miranda inside the first round of a light heavyweight clash scheduled for eight Saturday at the Honda Center in Anaheim, California.
The fight closed out the preliminary, off-TV portion of the Golden Boy card topped by Oscar Duarte-Miguel Madueno, which turned out to be stacked with ruthless beatdowns.
After a quiet first minute, Gallardo, 9-0 (8 KOs), wobbled the 7-2 (3 KOs) Miranda with a hard right hand. Gallardo bullied Miranda in the corner and caught him with hard shots to the body and head as Miranda was on his way down. Referee Thomas Taylor waved off the bout at 1:41 of the first round. Miranda, who fell forward, needed a few minutes to recover and regain his feet.
Gallardo, a 21-year-old from Mexico, looked vicious and patient in the ring. He is on a four-fight stoppage streak, though he has never fought beyond six completed rounds at a time and has yet to fight beyond a scheduled eight rounds.
Francisco Pacheco, 7-4-2, absorbed the most visually brutal defeat of the night in a lightweight bout scheduled for six rounds. Daniel Garcia, 11-0 (9 KOs), clashed heads with Pacheco in the opening round, producing a rivulet of blood down the right side of Pacheco’s face that smeared his face, neck, chest chest and arms red before the end of the round. Garcia, of Denver, bloodied Pacheco’s nose in the second round and battered him in the third, sinking him to the canvas with a body shot that hastened the stoppage referee Ray Corona looked like he was planning anyway.
In a junior featherweight matchup scheduled for six rounds, Gael Cabrera, 7-0 (4 KOs), outclassed and shut out Roberto Pucheta, 14-26-3 (8 KOs). The first round featured phone-booth action for the final minute and a half. Cabrera landed the cleanest blow with a hurtful left just before the bell, but he shipped quite a few power shots in return. Cabrera looked about two weight classes larger than Pucheta in the ring and controlled the bout, showing off slick defense throughout that impressed at least as much as his combinations. Pucheta had been stopped only once in his previous 25 losses, though – and that to Emanuel Navarette – and he grew into the bout as Cabrera seemed to tire slightly. Still, Cabrera landed the better punches in every round and won by unanimous scores of 60-54.
Fabian Guzman, 7-0 (7 KOs), beat down and stopped the 11-4 (3 KOs) Daniel Lim in a thrilling middleweight round. The underdog in Lim rocked Guzman early with a hard right hand and an uppercut. But after two minutes of attritional two-way action, Lim sank to the ground from a body shot. He rose at the count of nine, Arturo Gatti-style, only to go down conclusively beneath a fierce barrage of power shots from Guzman. Guzman’s record includes no elite names of note, but his record alone could soon make him a contender in a barren middleweight division.
Junior welterweight Javier Meza, 2-0 (2 KOs), stopped Lyle Mcfarlane, 3-7 (1 KO), in the second round. Meza landed body shots and straight punches through Mcfarlane’s guard almost as soon as the fight began. In the second round, Meza clocked Mcfarlane with a vicious overhand right against the ropes. Seconds later, Mcfarlane dropped to the canvas in a ruled slip, but he appeared hurt and reached his gloves out to the referee to help him get back to his feet. Meza followed up with a barrage, knocking Mcfarlane sideways and nearly through the ropes, prompting the stoppage.
In the first bout on the card, a junior featherweight clash scheduled for four rounds, Kevin Gudiño scored a third-round stoppage of Rafael Castillo. Gudiño, 19, took charge immediately with powerful combinations that landed on his relatively inactive 35-year-old opponent. Castillo landed a counter left hook in the first round but little else of consequence. Though he taunted Gudiño in the second round, he soon found himself on the canvas after eating a big left, a right to the temple and a hard body shot on each flank. The referee waved the fight off 35 seconds into Round 3 – immediately after Castillo, 2-5 (1 KO), touched the canvas, though the knockdown didn’t look especially heavy.