It had moments of excitement, but it wasn’t the all-slugfest we were hoping for, and it certainly wasn’t the total domination from the young lion we were expecting.
In any case, Antonio Orozco defeated Humberto Soto in a 10 round affair on the co-feature of HBO’s Boxing After Dark, setting up the crowd for the highly anticipated feature bout between Lucas Matthysse and Viktor Postol.
Orozco started off the fight in a predictable manner, utilizing his superior size and technical ability. He fought behind the jab, but was never able to make anything major happen with his power shots. Those punches landed well enough, but they did not fully earn the respect from Soto.
Soto was able to gain some offensive momentum of his own, although he never dominated any one part of the fight. The major benefit to seeing Soto attempt to string together offense was that he was able to force Orozco into mini firefights of varying exchanges.
Orozco wouldn’t allow Sotto much time on offense and reestablished his jab in the fight as well as his ability to use his footwork to stay. The real difference maker was Orozco’s body work, which definitely was a catalyst for Soto’s inability to dig deep in the later rounds.
The fight went the distance and Orozco was able to pull off the unanimous decision, despite appearing less than dominant in the early middle rounds, as the judges scored the fight 98-91 and 97-92 twice, taking into factor that Orozco was deducted a point for a low blow.
In early action, Mercito Gesta defeated Miguel Angel Mendoza by unanimous decision and D’Mitrius Ballard continued his undefeated streak by defeating Juan Carlos Rojas by unanimous decision.
