Juan Francisco Estrada defeated Dewayne Beamon in style in the headline attraction billed as a homecoming fight in front of a sellout crowd of 12,000.
Estrada (40-3, 27KOs) knocked the American Beamon (16-2-1, 11KOs) down twice in the second round enroute to stopping him via TKO in the ninth round at the Centro de Usos Multiples Arena in Hermosillo, Mexico.
It was a dominant performance as many experts envisioned against the little known and untested Beamon.
The first knockdown came courtesy of a check left hook that caught Beamon flush and that was soon followed by a body shot, that crumpled the challenger to the canvas for the second time. Neither knockdown appeared to seriously hurt Beamon, but it would foreshadow the onslaught to come.
Beamon appeared to be genuinely hurt on the ropes in the third round when he was caught by a series of hard combinations.
To his credit, Beamon never lost confidence and consistently attempted to go toe-to-toe with Estrada but was comprehensively out-boxed in the process. The gap in their respective skill sets was painstakingly on full display as Estrada was simply too efficient and in a completely different class.
Estrada seemed to take the middle rounds off, taunting Beamon to throw his best shots while he fought lazily off the ropes. A more skilled fighter would have certainly made Estrada pay for that gimmick, but Beamon did not have the accuracy to capitalize on the opportunity.
Nevertheless, Beamon never stopped trying to use his speed and supposed power to hurt the WBC super flyweight champion.
The lopsided fight reached its inevitable end in the ninth when Estrada pounced on an exhausted Beamon with several punches to the head. At this point, Beamon was making no effort to defend himself, forcing the referee to jump in and stop the fight at the 0:51 mark.
Beamon was still on his feet but collapsed thereafter to his knees as he appeared to absorb the disappointment of the defeat.
Undercard Results
In the co-feature bout, Filip Hrgovic (9-0, 7KOs) had an easy time with opponent Mario Heredia (16-7-1, 13KOs), knocking him out in the third round. While Heredia offered very little resistance, Hrgovic basically telegraphed his big right hand which he was able to land often enough to inflict serious damage. The giant will need to develop an effective left hand to advance in the heavyweight division.
Junior middleweight Liam Smith (28-1, 16KOs) made a triumphant return to the ring scoring a seventh-round knockout over Mario Lorazno (33-10, 24KOs). Smith stalked Lorazno for much of the fight and picked his shots in this one. A left hook to the liver in the sixth round really seemed to hurt the Mexican and a follow-up attack by Smith would put him down. He barely made it out of that round, and it was clear that he had not yet fully recovered when the referee was forced to halt the bout in the following round. Smith looked good in this fight, but he will probably never be good enough to compete against world-class opponents.
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The most spectacular finish of the night came in the main card’s opening bout featuring super middleweight prospect Alexis Espino (4-0, 3KOs) as he turned the lights out on Oscar Soto (1-2, 0KOs) with a sweeping left hook. It was a fight that he was losing but it only takes one punch to change the entire outcome.
