VILORIA IN TOUGH WIN AGAINST SOTO
By Salvador Lopez
PhilBoxing.com
Sun, 11 Jul 2010
Brian Viloria received a rough welcome in the flyweight division surviving a spirited challenge from the relentless Omar Soto of Mexico before escaping with a split decision victory in the main event of Boxing at the Bay IV held last night at the Ynares Arena, Pasig City.
The first few rounds (1 to 4) appeared to have gone to Viloria?s way using his superior speed to outbox his Mexican opponent. In the third round, he rocked Soto with a big right but failed to make a follow-up, apparently conserving his energy to avoid being spent out as what had happened in his title loss to Carlos Tamara last January. Soto began to be more aggressive in the middle rounds (5 to 7) putting pressure on Viloria and initiating some flurries that forced the latter to cover up. The two fighters engaged in furious exchanges that made the rounds too close to call and could go either way. Soto further intensified the pressure in the closing rounds producing a solid 8th round with sneaking punches to the body and easily won the 9th round when he was almost landing at will on the already tiring Viloria who managed to survive the onslaught. The two combatants slugged it out in the 10th and final round with Soto still coming forward and looking for a knockout even though Viloria was too elusive this time often connecting with well time counters to the head. In the end, the Hawaiian Punch won a split but well deserved decision by the scores of 97-93 and 97-94 in his favour and 93-97 in Soto?s favour.
When interviewed after the bout, Viloria mentioned that he really expected the tough challenge from Soto and that there would still be some work to do on his boxing.
In the supporting bout, Al Sabaupan hardly broke a sweat in disposing of the tall Wonpichit Twins Gym of Thailand knocking the latter out in the very first round andretaining his IBF Pan Pacific lightweight title.
Rounding off the results of the other bouts:
Vincent Palicte won a close unanimous victory (96-94 twice and 97-95) over Renan Branzuela in a very lacklustre 10-round bantamweight bout;
Prospect Roberto Gonzales passed his toughest test so far winning, albeit, impressively, his 8-round featherweight bout against the wily veteran Eric Rapada via a UD (76-75, 78-73, 77-74);
Jhonmark Apolinario used his superior boxing skills to frustrate Rex Olisa all night long with crisp punching scoring an easy UD victory over the latter (77-75, 79-73, and 78-74) in their 8-round super-flyweight bout;
Erano Semilllano used his volume punching to finally wear down Benezer Alolod in the 5th round in their junior flyweight bout scheduled for six rounds; and
Ivan Soriano dominated Michael Borja in their minimum-weight bout scoring a knockdown in the 3rd and two more in the 5th en route to scoring a wide UD victory (identical 59-51 in all three judges? scorecards).
Click here to view a list of other articles written by Salvador Lopez.
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