Though in vastly different locales, the SHOWTIME sweet science scenario in the Midwest featured the same division as Las Vegas. In front of a near sellout crowd of 6,000 at Heartland Events Center in Grand Island, Neb., lightweight DeMarco (25-2-1, 18 KOs) earned his position as the mandatory challenger for the WBC lightweight belt by defeating a game Sanchez.
In the opening minute of the 12-round distance bout between two Mexican fighters, DeMarco landed a big left hand that opened a cut above Sanchez’ left eye. The third round featured DeMarco scoring with a left hook that brought Sanchez (20-4-1, 11 KOs) down before referee Vic Drakulich correctly ruled it a slip. The gash and near knockdown, however, had little impact on Sanchez as the cut fighter proceeded to back up DeMarco throughout the second half of the fight. Though aggressive, Sanchez’ punches were slow, soft and caused little to no damage.
Sanchez kept the fight competitive but eventually lost a unanimous decision by the scores of 116-112, 117-111, 115-113.
Coming off of his first career loss to Edwin Valero one year ago, DeMarco didn’t have the dominant performance he hoped for against the long and lanky Sanchez but showed poise throughout the fight in contrast to his barroom brawler days of yesteryear on ShoBox: The New Generation.
Said DeMarco: “Sanchez is a great fighter and he threw a lot of punches. It was a great fight. I love fighting in Nebraska. The crowd was really into it. That really motivated me.”
As part of the crowd, former world champions Frank Tate and Leon Spinks looked on from Nebraska where the state held its first night of boxing in three years. In contrast, the host of countless boxing matches, Las Vegas, featured some current boxing stars in the crowd including Urbano Antillon, who will rematch Humberto Soto after their 2010 fight of the year barnburner on the May 7 Manny Pacquiao-Shane Mosley undercard on SHOWTIME PPV, and Rios’ stablemate Nonito Donaire.
Tonight’s lightweight action will replay on Tuesday, March 1, at 10:30 p.m. ET/PT on SHO Extreme and be available On Demand beginning March 1 through March 14.
Steve Albert called the action with Al Bernstein serving as expert analyst and Jim Gray as ringside reporter in Las Vegas, while Curt Menefee handled blow-by-blow in Nebraska with Steve Farhood on hand for color commentary.
The fights were promoted by Top Rank Inc. and Gary Shaw Productions.
As in September, I once again ran out of gas in the 10th & 11th championship rounds of October & November with this column, but I recovered to complete them and will unleash a few more flurries to close out the 12th and final round.
In the first week of October, Hassan N’Dam won a UD over Curtis Stevens in an eliminator for the right to challenge Jermaine Taylor who defeated aging Sam Soliman to regain the IBF Middleweight title. How Taylor even earned this title shot is another story altogether, but it is all irrelevant as he is now the champion. However he will not have too much time to savor his victory as he has assault and battery charges pending against him and an upcoming court fight that may turn out to be the toughest fight of his life, just when things started to look up for him in boxing, we wish him luck.
