Jesus Cuellar defeated Vic Darchinyan in a scheduled 12 round affair for Cuellar’s WBA “regular” featherweight title on the undercard of Guerrero-Martinez.
Cuellar looked like the better fighter early on and he was landing the better shots and more of them. Still, the first round was awfully close as Darchinyan made the punches he did land count. The question heading into the fight was Darchinyan’s ability to do damage. He’s always been known as a heavy hitter, but since moving up in weight he’s not shown the same ability to dramatically hurt his opponents. It was clear in round 1 that his power left something to be desired, but he was still landing hard and flush.
There was an overall separation between fighters and the technical effort was there, although it was against one of the most unsuspecting and unorthodox fighters in the world, and that’s not even taking into account that Darchinyan is southpaw.
Still, Darchinyan was landing at a higher percentage. He had a huge 4th round where he actually staggered Cuellar back for a moment. Darchinyan landed consecutive left hands and it appeared as though he couldn’t miss with the left.
Cuellar settled down and listened to the advice of his corner Robert Garcia, who told him to box and keep the tempo.
Darchinyan began to look gassed in the fight and in round 8 he was barely moving at all and throwing with little intent. Cuellar ended up landing a huge right hand that absolutely floored Vic, although it was a left hand that started it off.
Darchinyan made it up off the canvas, but he was basically out on his feet. It could’ve been stopped, but the referee gave Darchinyan, a fighter that has always been a tough out, the benefit of the doubt. Darchinyan was on the receiving end of a handful of power punches before the referee quickly stepped in, although Vic’s corner was on ring apron trying to stop the fight moments before it was finally called off.
It was an impressive performance from Cuellar in an entertaining fight. Cuellar successfully defended his title and will hopefully get a unification by the end of the year.
