Monday 23 July 2012

Bryan Vasquez v Jorge Lacierva

Personally I find the whole "world title" scene a bit of a joke and the "interim" WBA Super Featherweight title is a perfect example of what is wrong with the sport. Just days after WBA Super Featherweight champion Takashi Uchiyama scored a 3 round technical draw with Filipino challenger Michael Farenas, the WBA "interim" Super Featherweight Champion Bryan Vazquez (29-0, 15) successfully defneded his title against Jorge Lacierva (41-9-6, 27).

The 24 year old Vazquez, of Costa Rica is one of the more under-rated fighters in world boxing and arguably the most deserving contender out there to currently be fighting for a world title. Sadly however Vazquez holds the "interim" title that he won last November by decisioning Nicaraguan Santos Benavide. Against Lacierva we saw Vazquez making his first defense, sadly however the bout told us little we didn't already know about either guy.

The challenger, Lacierva, a Mexican veteran has been around the block a few times and debuted way back in 1994 when Vazquez himself was only 7 years old. Lecierva's first title was won at Flyweight (112lbs) back in 1997 and since then he has lost at world level at Super Flyweight (technical decision loss to Marc Johnson back in 1999), Super Bantamweight (a 12 round decision loss to Celestino Caballero in 2007) and at Featherweight (a 12 round decision loss to Billy Dib in 2011). Quite what he did to deserve a "world title" fight up at Super Featherweight since losing to Dib is a real mystery to me.

Whilst I'm not a fan of the fight, or the title that was on the line I will admit I'm proud of the way Vazquez did the job at hand. Lacierva tried all the dirty veteran tricks in the book but Vazquez adapted to them and broke down the Mexican with solid counter shots. Lacierva was eventually stopped in round 9 following a body shot having been put down once earlier in the same round. It was only the second time in Lacierva's long career that he'd been stopped.

Now, if the WBA are reading this, can we please stop this nonsense of having interim titles and "regular" titles defended on the same week? If I can't have Uchiyama v Ao later this year how about Uchiyama v Vazquez, if only to get rid of this stupid interim title!

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