In a display of sheer boxing endurance, Mario Barrios scraped by with a unanimous decision win against Fabian Maidana after a grueling 12 rounds. Barrios landed a textbook straight right in the third, flooring Maidana like a sack of potatoes. Maidana, hardly deterred and as stubborn as ever, bounced back to drag out the remaining rounds.
Barrios, trying to sound tough, admitted, “Once my eye swelled up, seeing straight was a bit of a joke, but we kept at it, scraped for every opening, and nicked the win.”
Meanwhile, Maidana didn’t just sport a bruised body but a bruised ego too, as he grumbled about his training stint, yet vowed a dramatic comeback, “No whining, just you wait, I’ll haul a championship back to Argentina.”
As Maidana battled on with a determination worthy of a better cause, Barrios struggled with his ballooning eye, still managing to outpunch Maidana 139 to 84 across the ordeal, dominating in nearly every round.
Barrios wasn’t shy about his ambitions post-fight, declaring, “I want all the noise at welterweight. Bring it on, I’m belt hunting. Viva Mexico!”
The pay-per-view also featured Brandon Figueroa, who retained his Interim WBA Featherweight title with a brutal body shot in the ninth, knocking Jessie Magdaleno out cold.
Magdaleno managed some early success, but Figueroa, undeterred, smothered his efforts and snatched the momentum back, culminating in a decisive hook that ended the night for Magdaleno just before the bell.
“I waited for the right moment, and bam, down he went,” said Figueroa, while Magdaleno, somewhat dazed, recounted, “I heard the 10-second clapper, tried to make room, and then that liver shot just wiped my legs from under me.”
On the undercard, WBA Welterweight Champion Eimantas Stanionis made a comeback after a hiatus, securing a unanimous decision over Gabriel Maestre in a fight that revisited their old amateur rivalry.
Stanionis, despite admitting to some ring rust, landed a staggering 41% of his power shots. Maestre threw more but landed less, a valiant effort that still saw him pushed back by Stanionis’s superior firepower.
“I was just okay, but next time, watch out,” Stanionis warned, eyeing more active times ahead without the sparring limitations of Lithuania.
The action kicked off with Vito Mielnicki Jr. showing his mettle against Ronald Cruz, scoring knockdowns in the third and fourth rounds, cruising to a unanimous decision victory.
