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Tonight’s PBC on FOX main event was another stinker for the brand with the largest natural television audience in the sport, as Luis Ortiz finished Alexander Flores in just 46 seconds of what was an obvious mismatch on paper and it was even more one in the ring.
Ortiz landed 3 of 10 hits recorded, but the shot was a body shot that sent Flores (who landed 0 of 1 hits) to the canvas:
Flores (18-3-1, 16 KOs) has a pretty decent WL record until you do more than look at it. He’s had a lot of club-level victories, even drawing one with a 4-4-2 guy in Costa Mesa, California in 2014. That came after a stoppage loss at the fourth round. Charles Martin in 2014. Joseph Parker also stopped him in three in December 2018, and now this.
Ortiz, 41 (32-2, 27 KO) still has hopes of becoming Cuba’s first professional heavyweight champion, but the best chances have probably been overlooked given his age and the fact that top weights heavy now are really good and much younger than him. He landed two shots with Deontay Wilder and, although competitive both times, he was stopped both times. He’s still a top 10 heavyweight I really think, but he could be a placeholder more than anything. We didn’t learn anything in this fight as it turned out to be an even bigger waste of a FOX main event than anticipated. Ortiz needed to fight someone, but this was really a bad match, even compared to Ortiz’s other bad match-ups over the years.
Frank Sanchez TKO-4 Brian Howard
Let’s keep it simple: Sanchez (16-0, 12 KO) was several levels better than Howard (15-4, 12 KO) and the fight was not a contest at all.
Sanchez, a 28-year-old Cuban PBC, seems like he’s really starting to like it, he just dominated Howard. Howard is usually a totally game fighter, but two things:
- Howard is a cruiserweight who has even dabbled at 175.
- Gambling aside, Howard is a 40-year-old guy who loses a lot to decent opponents.
Howard just couldn’t do anything with Sanchez, he was knocked down in the third and twice in the fourth. Not that I didn’t try, I just didn’t have the tools.
Michael Coffie KO-2 Joey Abell
Coffie (11-0, 8 KOs) had a break on a PBC card in August, where he had a fun fight with Luis Peña, which was a total contrast in size, style and body shape. Coffie is a huge man, 6’5 ”, 265-280 pounds or more, solidly built, a true mountain of a man. But he’s 34 years old, inexperienced for his age, and slow and rather rough, to be polite. However, brute force? Yes, it definitely has that.
However, that was not so much at stake here. Abell (35-11, 33 KO) was doing well early on, as the 39-year-old Minnesota lefty veteran landed a few shots, but then he appeared to break his right bicep, and that was it in the second round.
Carlos Negron TKO-2 Rafael Rios
Negrón, a 33-year-old Puerto Rican, improves to 22-3 (18 KO) with this victory, with Ríos falling to 11-3 (8 KO). Ríos is a 35-year-old Mexican-American, born in Tijuana and based in San Diego, and Negrón was a big, big step for him, even though Negron is not a serious contender.
Negron turned pro in 2009 fighting around 185 pounds, between light heavyweight and cruiserweight, and when you look at it now, he went to heavyweight in 2011, at 245, it’s hard to imagine he ever weighed that, because it’s not like If you were a small type of bowling ball, it measures 6’6 ”with a reach of 83 inches. It’s basically a list fill for PBC, but everyone has and needs a list fill. It’s not boring to watch, that’s all people ask.
