BOXING RESULTS FROM PANAMA AND NOTES FROM THE 31ST WBO CONVENTION
By Dong Secuya
PhilBoxing.com
Fri, 02 Nov 2018
PANAMA CITY ? Wednesday night in this historic city, boxing stars and many of the most recognizable names in the boxing community congregate to watch exciting fights featuring up and coming fighters during the 2nd day of the ongoing 31st WBO Convention at the iconic Hotel El Panama here.
WBO president Francisco 'Paco' Valcarcel, who took the helm of the boxing body since 1996, was visibly proud of the star-studded gathering at the hotel's Centro de Convenciones Vazco Nunez de Balboa in the boxing event organized by Peter Rivera's PR Best Boxing dubbed as 'Zona Box'.
WBO president Paco Valcarcel awards the belt to Jason Sanchez who won by unanimous decision over Jean Carlos Rivera.
In the main the event in a battle between two undefeated fightes, highly touted and Top Rank promoted featherweight Jean Carlos Rivera (15-1-0, 10KOs) of Puerto Rico succumbed to the relentless pressure of Jason Sanchez (13-0-0, 6KOs) of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States in a classic bull against a matador match up. Rivera landed heavy and telling counters to the head of the surging Sanchez in the early rounds but the American-Mexican withstood the bombs to turn the tables on Rivera from the middle rounds. As Rivera appeared to gas out from the 6th round onward, Sanchez was able to connect many of his volume punches that finally took a toll on Rivera who was counted for a standing knockdown in the closing minute of the 10th round after the Puerto Rican was about to hit the canvas if not for the ropes. Sanchez thus won the vacant WBO Youth Featherweight title and should land a world ranking in a packed division.
In other results, Agustin Mauro Gauto (10-0-0, 6KOs) of Argentina made short work of Jose Antonio Jimenez (20-10-1, 9KOs) of Columbia to captured the vacant WBO Latino light flyweight title. Gauto delivered a picture perfect left cross to the head of Jimenez who went down and was deemed unfit continue by Referee Fred Ghartey for a first round TKO victory by Gauto.
Yenifel Vicente vs Victor Proa.
In the other title fight, Yenifel Vicente (34-3-2, 26KOs) of Miami, Florida via Dominican Republic, finished off Victor Proa (29-6-2, 22KOs) of Nuevo Leon, Mexico at 1:22 of the first round to successfully defend his WBO Latino super bantamweight title.
In a battle of two up and coming Panamians scheduled for 6 rounds in the super featherweight division, Eliecer Tenorio (3-2-0, 1KO) won by unanimous decision over Jose Bieta (4-2-1, 4KOs) with scores of 59-57, 58-56 and 58-56.
Two matchups lined up for the night got canceled. The original main event bout between two time Olympian Jeyvier Cintron of Puerto Rico against Panamanian Ricardo Nunez did not push thru after Nunez was injured. The battle for the Francisco Fonseca of Costa Rica and Yohan Vasquez of the Dominican Republic for Fonseca's WBO Latino super featherweight title was also canceled.
The gathering was graced by Panamanian all time great Roberto 'Manos de Piedra' Duran and former Panamanian world champions Hilario Zapata and Celestino Caballero. Current WBO world champions who also graced the event are Light Heavyweight Eleider Alvarez of Columbia, Jr middleweight Jaime Mungia of Mexico, Super Featherweight Alberto Machado of Puerto Rico, Flyweight Kosei Tanaka of Japan, Jr Flyweight Angel 'Tito' Acosta of Puerto Rico; Female world champions Lightweight Rose Volante of Brazil, Jr Featherweight Dina Thorslund of Denmark and Jr Bantamweight Raja Amasheh of Germany; Former world champions who also came to the event were Fernando Montiel of Mexico,
Ivan Calderon of Puerto Rico, Koko Kovacs of Hungary, Artur Grigorian of Germany
and Acelino 'Popo' Freitas of Brazil.
Notes ? In the morning session on the second day of the convention, Officials Chairman Michael Pernick presented a program for the continuing education of the officials... The new WBO regional belt that will be created for Australia, New Zealand, Eastern Europe and Russia has been settled and was to be called WBO Global. President Valcarcel moved for the adjournment of the morning proceedings to defer to the ABC, Referee and Judges seminars that will be held throughout the day.
Tuesday night, the Convention delegates were brought to the world famous Panamana Canal at Miraflores Locks on the Pacific Ocean side of the Canal where ships were about to enter going to the Atlantic Ocean side and ships coming from the Atlantic Ocean side were about to exit to the Pacific Ocean side. The delegates enjoyed the view of exiting ships from the Miraflores Locks visitor center hosted by Panama Sports director. The Panama Canal cuts the ship route from the Pacific to the Atlantic to 8 hours instead of two weeks by going to the southern tip of South America.
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