By Nick Bellafatto, Ringside
In the first bout of the evening in a schedule eight round junior featherweight attraction, Randy Caballero (15-0, 8 KO’s) of Coachella, California would stop Jamal Parram of St. Louis, Missouri (5-6, 1 KO) for a fifth round TKO stoppage. The time was 1:50.
Parram would be warned for holding on more than one occasion and the reasons for his actions were quite obvious. For as soon as Caballero was fully able to let his heavy hands go they would visibly damage his counterpart, who was by the third round reduced to surviving.
Randy would put the finishing touches on the St. Louis native in the fifth round, dropping him twice with the same punch, a left uppercut to the liver. And although Parram would rise from each of these knockdowns, he would thereafter take a knee upon receiving yet another solid combination from Caballero, prompting referee Jose Cobian to call a halt to the action.
In the second of two eight-round bouts, this time at junior welterweight, although the taller Omar Figueroa (18-0-1, 14 KO’s) would back his opponent Alain Hernandez (18-11-2, 10 KO’s) to the ropes and throw non-stop to open the bout, of all the punches it seemed like there were only one or two solid shots.
With that said, and although Hernandez didn’t throw back much looking to perhaps respond at an appropriate moment, referee Jose Cobian would step in and call a halt at 1:34 of the first round for what by all accounts looked to be a premature stoppage. As a result, Figueroa gets the W and Hernandez walks away with the knowledge that he can’t always trust in other peoples judgment.
In a junior middleweight bout where Jermell Charlo (18-0, 8 KO’s) of Houston Texas was slightly outworking a game adversary in Denis Douglin (14-2, 8 KO’s) over the course of the first four rounds, a straight right hand landed previously by Charlo had found the mark yet again. This time however, that same straight right had visibly more force on it to drop Denis in the fifth round.
Able to be the count, Douglin of Marlboro, New Jersey wouldn’t be able to maintain his balance, staggering not once but twice so that referee Wayne Hedgepeth would react by waving the bout off. The time was 1:12 of round 5.
In a so called four round swing bout between junior middleweights of Pahrump, Nevada (9-0, 7 KO’s) and Joel Vargas of Durango, Mexico (3-7-1, 3 KO’s), a totally willing Vargas was stalking and swinging most of the way.
However, the reality was that Finney was by far the more polished of the two, a boxer puncher who landed the cleaner harder punches to both body and head throughout, while defensively Michael picked off most everything the Mexican fighter would offer up. The end result would be a unanimous decision shutout 40-36 all the way around in favor of Finney who keeps his undefeated record intact.
