PHOENIX – Yamileth Mercado looks to stifle her opponents.
They try to strike. She sends back five. They raise a fist. She unleashes a combination, even hitting the enemy’s crooked shoulder.
It was a similar story on Saturday evening, when Mexico’s WBC women’s junior featherweight champion successfully defended her belt for the seventh time, defeating Somalia’s Ramla Ali by unanimous decision 98-92, 98-93, 97-93 at the Footprint Center.
Mercado (24-3) defended the belt, thwarting Ali’s counterattacks, hoping that a series of punches would convince the judges and emphasize that she was a more energetic fighter.
Mercado, 26, has owned the belt since 2019.
Her willingness to unleash wild series of punches in response to pressure became her trademark, and she showed off her fighting skills in the first rounds, sending quick combinations of punches at Ali.
This posed quite a challenge for the challenger, who was unable to go on the offensive in the fifth round.
Ali (9-2) regained her rhythm in the sixth round with counterattacks, and trainer Manny Robles urged her to raise the intensity of the action.
However, with only two knockouts to her name, Ali wasn’t mighty enough to worry Mercado.
As the stakes increased in the ninth round, both fighters closed in and almost jockeyed for striking position, and Mercado emerged triumphant, as she well knows.
An inspired Phoenix crowd packed out impressively for the first fight televised on DAZN, which Mexican Arturo Cardenas won by majority decision over local fighter Danny Barrios (95-95, 97-93, 96-94).
Barrios (15-1), of Glendale, Arizona, was a bit too wild in his moves toward openings, with Cardenas (14-0-1) either moving away from or blocking them in the middle rounds as Cardenas capitalized on his opportunities.
This trend led to Cardenas finding Barrios with a piercing right and a piercing left in the seventh period, keeping Barrios off balance.
This prompted Barrios to take piercing action, and the exchanges in the eighth period were the most lively of the entire fight. In the ninth and tenth sets, Barrios landed his best punches, but he also took other weaker punches and danced away from the action, drawing jeers from the clamorous crowd.
In the bantamweight fight, Gabriel Muratalla defeated Mexican Carlos Fontes by unanimous decision (79-73, 78-74, 77-75) to extend his undefeated record to 12-0.
By staying busier and landing more impressive punches, Muratalla built a lead within three rounds and cruised from there. At age 30, Muratalla would do well to improve his power punching as he failed to seriously injure the veteran Fontes (23-4-1).
Muratalla, of Fontana, California, is the older brother of undefeated lightweight fighter Raymond Muratalla (20-0, 16 KO), the No. 2 fighter in his weight class according to the WBO and WBC.
Phoenix’s Fabian Rojo opened the fight with a powerful left hook to the nose that dropped Albuquerque’s Daniel Gonzalez in the opening seconds of the first round. The left-handed fighter cleverly threw left hooks to overwhelm Gonzalez, whose night it was supposed to be.
After just 73 seconds of the second round, the 22-year-old Rojo ended the fight after his second knockdown with two straight lefts to the head, the last of which was a crushing punch to the jaw that left Rojo 9-0 with 7 knockouts and Gonzalez 5-2.
Mexican Leonardo Rubalcava, 21, opened the card by relying on his striking ability to put away and defeat the smaller William Flenoy by unanimous decision of 60-54, 59-55, 59-55.
Rubalcava, now based in Southern California’s Jurupa Valley, improved to 8-0 with powerful right-hand strikes that kept Flenoy (3-4-1) from his opponents, although the 33-year-old Cleveland fighter revealed some defensive weaknesses that Rubalcava will certainly need to work on in training.
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