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Andrew Cancio Rips WBA Title From Machado by KO and Other Results

INDIO, Calif.-Underdog Andrew Cancio ripped away the WBA super featherweight world title from Puerto Rico’s Alberto Machado with a murderous body attack and became the first and only world champion from the small desert town of Blythe, California on Saturday.
More than 100 loud screaming fans from Blythe were present to witness the event.
Cancio (20-4-2, 15 KOs) survived a first round knockdown against Machado (21-1, 17 KOs) then showed why fans follow him whenever he fights with a furious rally in front of a near sold-out crowd at Fantasy Springs Casino. Pure delirium followed the change of world title ownership.
As soon as the two combatants stepped in the boxing ring Machado looked much larger against the smaller frame of Cancio. And when the Puerto Rican southpaw slugger connected with a left uppercut in the first round, he seemed too powerful even for Cancio.
“I had been there before. I know what to do when I get knocked down,” said Cancio, who now lives in Ventura but has family still in Blythe. “I was even able to score some punches. I didn’t cover up or hold.”
Cancio had shown a penchant for surviving slugfests against Rocky Juarez, Dardan (Zenunaj) and Rene Alvarado and for digging deep. Once again he displayed that same determination.
The father of two, who works for a utility company, stepped on the gas in the second round and never took his foot off the pedal with a grinding attack to the head and body of Machado. The Puerto Rican fighter had no idea how to defend the blistering blows coming his way.
Machado tried to stymie Cancio’s momentum but just when it looked like the storm was over, the California desert fighter would batter the body relentless from one side to the other. The screams from the crowd seemed to add more fuel to Cancio’s fire in the third round.
The loud cheers penetrated the arena. It seemed like all 19,000 residents of the desert town near the Colorado River were present.
“They really motivate me,” Cancio said who was fighting for the 10th time at the Indio casino.
Cancio moved in for another attack somewhat cautiously in the fourth round. Then the murderous machine-like attack to the body began penetrating through Machado’s defense and the Puerto Rican dropped to a single knee and took an eight-count. The fight continued and Cancio was like a hungry wolf chasing injured prey. Machado tried to fend off the attack but again blows to the body sent him down again. He beat the count and rose with Cancio charging in again with arms pumping and connected again. Referee Raul Caiz Jr. waved the fight over at 2:16 of the fourth round. The desert town of Blythe had its first world champion.
“This was the fight of my life. I feel extremely great winning this world title by knockout,” said Cancio. “It’s been a long road and it felt like we thought it would: unbelievable. For me to execute a plan like we did feels great.”
Machado said the weight loss may have contributed to his poor showing.
“I felt weak in there,” Machado said. “I think I have to move up from 130 pounds.”
Still, it was a great moment for Cancio who almost retired more than a year ago.
“I’m extremely happy,” he said. “I wasn’t going to fail.”
WBC Super Bantam Title Fight
WBC super bantamweight world titlist Rey Vargas (33-0, 22 KOs) hung on to the title literally with an unpopular hit and hold formula against Venezuela’s rugged Franklin Manzanilla (18-5, 17 KOs), especially after tasting the canvas.
Manzanilla caught Vargas with a left hook to the chin in the second round after a brief exchange and after that, the tall skinny Mexican fighter grabbed hold of the Venezuelan whenever he got within grasping distance.
Vargas was never penalized for the excessive holding but Manzanilla was not so lucky with his tactics of trying to break the constrictor like grip of the champion. Manzanilla was deducted points in the seventh round for supposedly hitting on the break and again in the eighth. Meanwhile Vargas continued to hold throughout the fight with impunity. After 12 rounds all three judges saw it 117-108 for Vargas who retains the world title. The crowd was not pleased with the decision or the champion’s tactics.
South El Monte’s Jojo Diaz (28-1, 14 KOs) moved up in weight to the super featherweight division and found it advantageous in defeating local rival Charles Huerta (20-6, 12 KOs) by unanimous decision after 10 rounds.
“This will be my weight unless some of the bigger names like Leo Santa Cruz or Oscar Valdez want to fight me,” said Diaz a former two-time challenger for the featherweight world title. “Then I’ll fight at 126.”
Huerta couldn’t match Diaz’s speed but hung in against the speedy southpaw for all 10 rounds.
“I had him hurt a few times, but I couldn’t finish him because he’s such a great warrior,” Diaz said.
Other Bouts
A battle between Mexican lightweights saw Nuevo Leon’s Adrian Estrella (29-3, 24 KOs) use a lot of movement to befuddle Parral’s Oscar Duarte (15-1-1, 10 KOs) and win the vacant WBC Continental America’s title by a disputed split decision.
Duarte must have been surprised to see Estrella box and move despite sporting an impressive knockout record. It took Duarte, who trains in Indio with Joel Diaz, several rounds to move within punching distance. He never figured out how to cut off the ring against Estrella who benefited from the lapse. After 10 rounds one judge saw Duarte the winner by 97-93, but two others saw it 98-92 and 96-94 for Estrella. The crowd was not pleased.
Former contender Tureano Johnson (20-2-1, 14 KOs) found a difficult opponent in Mexico’s Fernando Castaneda (26-13-1, 17 KOs) who despite a so-so record was coming to win. Both found success throughout the super middleweight fight. Johnson was dominant with right uppercuts and Castaneda found success early with overhand rights and left hooks. Neither was seriously hurt but after eight rounds the fight was ruled a split draw 77-75, 75-77, 76-76 when the scores were read.
“My opponent did an awesome job,” said Johnson after the entertaining back and forth fight.
Castaneda felt he had won but was more than happy that the crowd appreciated his effort.
“I’m very happy to have the crowd support me,” said Castaneda of Aguascalientes, Mexico. “I want a rematch.”
Azat Hovhannisyan (16-3, 13 KOs) utilized body shots to stop Lolito Sonsona (22-3-4, 9 KOs) in the fifth round of their super bantamweight match. Early in the fight, Hovhannisyan dropped the Filipino fighter with a left to the body but was deducted a point for an alleged low blow. It was a borderline punch but signified to the Armenian fighter to continue targeting the abdomen.
Hovhannisyan continued the pressure and though he battered Sonsona to the head repeatedly, nothing seemed to faze the Filipino fighter. But when he drifted to the body that’s where the fierce Armenian fighter found a weakness, Rights to the left side of Sonsona’s body floored the Filipino twice in the fifth round. At 2:23 Sonsona did not beat the count of 10 after the second body shot put him down on the ground. Referee Eddie Hernandez stopped the fight.
Local fighter Rommel Caballero (5-0, 4 KOs) knocked out Javier Rojas (1-3) in the first round of their super featherweight fight.
The fights can be seen on DAZN.
Photo credit: Alonzo Coston
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TSS Salutes Thomas Hauser and his Bernie Award Cohorts

The Boxing Writers Association of America has announced the winners of its annual Bernie Awards competition. The awards, named in honor of former five-time BWAA president and frequent TSS contributor Bernard Fernandez, recognize outstanding writing in six categories as represented by stories published the previous year.
Over the years, this venerable website has produced a host of Bernie Award winners. In 2024, Thomas Hauser kept the tradition alive. A story by Hauser that appeared in these pages finished first in the category “Boxing News Story.” Titled “Ryan Garcia and the New York State Athletic Commission,” the story was published on June 23. You can read it HERE.
Hauser also finished first in the category of “Investigative Reporting” for “The Death of Ardi Ndembo,” a story that ran in the (London) Guardian. (Note: Hauser has owned this category. This is his 11th first place finish for “Investigative Reporting”.)
Thomas Hauser, who entered the International Boxing Hall of Fame with the class of 2019, was honored at last year’s BWAA awards dinner with the A.J. Leibling Award for Outstanding Boxing Writing. The list of previous winners includes such noted authors as W.C. Heinz, Budd Schulberg, Pete Hamill, and George Plimpton, to name just a few.
The Leibling Award is now issued intermittently. The most recent honorees prior to Hauser were Joyce Carol Oates (2015) and Randy Roberts (2019).
Roberts, a Distinguished Professor of History at Purdue University, was tabbed to write the Hauser/Leibling Award story for the glossy magazine for BWAA members published in conjunction with the organization’s annual banquet. Regarding Hauser’s most well-known book, his Muhammad Ali biography, Roberts wrote, “It is nearly impossible to overestimate the importance of the book to our understanding of Ali and his times.” An earlier book by Hauser, “The Black Lights: Inside the World of Professional Boxing,” garnered this accolade: “Anyone who wants to understand boxing today should begin by reading ‘The Black Lights’.”
A panel of six judges determined the Bernie Award winners for stories published in 2024. The stories they evaluated were stripped of their bylines and other identifying marks including the publication or website for which the story was written.
Other winners:
Boxing Event Coverage: Tris Dixon
Boxing Column: Kieran Mulvaney
Boxing Feature (Over 1,500 Words): Lance Pugmire
Boxing Feature (Under 1,500 Words): Chris Mannix
The Dixon, Mulvaney, and Pugmire stories appeared in Boxing Scene; the Mannix story in Sports Illustrated.
The Bernie Award recipients will be honored at the forthcoming BWAA dinner on April 30 at the Edison Ballroom in the heart of Times Square. (For more information, visit the BWAA website). Two days after the dinner, an historic boxing tripleheader will be held in Times Square, the logistics of which should be quite interesting. Ryan Garcia, Devin Haney, and Teofimo Lopez share top billing.
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Mekhrubon Sanginov, whose Heroism Nearly Proved Fatal, Returns on Saturday

To say that Mekhrubon Sanginov is excited to resume his boxing career would be a great understatement. Sanginov, ranked #9 by the WBA at 154 pounds before his hiatus, last fought on July 8, 2022.
He was in great form before his extended leave, having scored four straight fast knockouts, advancing his record to 13-0-1. Had he remained in Las Vegas, where he had settled after his fifth pro fight, his career may have continued on an upward trajectory, but a trip to his hometown of Dushanbe, Tajikistan, turned everything haywire. A run-in with a knife-wielding bully nearly cost him his life, stalling his career for nearly three full years.
Sanginov was exiting a restaurant in Dushanbe when he saw a man, plainly intoxicated, harassing another man, an innocent bystander. Mekhrubon intervened and was stabbed several times with a long knife. One of the puncture wounds came perilously close to puncturing his heart.
“After he stabbed me, I ran after him and hit him and caught him to hold for the police,” recollects Sanginov. “There was a lot of confusion when the police arrived. At first, the police were not certain what had happened.
“By the time I got to the hospital, I had lost two liters of blood, or so I was told. After I was patched up, one of the surgeons said to me, ‘Give thanks to God because he gave you a second life.’ It is like I was born a second time.”
“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have happened in any city,” he adds. (A story about the incident on another boxing site elicited this comment from a reader: “Good man right there. World would be a better place if more folk were willing to step up when it counts.”)
Sanginov first laced on a pair of gloves at age 10 and was purportedly 105-14 as an amateur. Growing up, the boxer he most admired was Roberto Duran. “Muhammad Ali will always be the greatest and [Marvin] Hagler was great too, but Duran was always my favorite,” he says.
During his absence from the ring, Sanginov married a girl from Tajikistan and became a father. His son Makhmud was born in Las Vegas and has dual citizenship. “Ideally,” he says, “I would like to have three more children. Two more boys and the last one a daughter.”
He also put on a great deal of weight. When he returned to the gym, his trainer Bones Adams was looking at a cruiserweight. But gradually the weight came off – “I had to give up one of my hobbies; I love to eat,” he says – and he will be resuming his career at 154. “Although I am the same weight as before, I feel stronger now. Before I was more of a boy, now I am a full-grown man,” says Sanginov who turned 29 in February.
He has a lot of rust to shed. Because of all those early knockouts, he has answered the bell for only eight rounds in the last four years. Concordantly, his comeback fight on Saturday could be described as a soft re-awakening. Sanginov’s opponent Mahonri Montes, an 18-year pro from Mexico, has a decent record (36-10-2, 25 KOs) but has been relatively inactive and is only 1-3-1 in his last five. Their match at Thunder Studios in Long Beach, California, is slated for eight rounds.
On May 10, Ardreal Holmes (17-0) faces Erickson Lubin (26-2) on a ProBox card in Kissimmee, Florida. It’s an IBF super welterweight title eliminator, meaning that the winner (in theory) will proceed directly to a world title fight.
Sanginov will be watching closely. He and Holmes were scheduled to meet in March of 2022 in the main event of a ShoBox card on Showtime. That match fell out when Sanginov suffered an ankle injury in sparring.
If not for a twist of fate, that may have been Mekhrubon Sanginov in that IBF eliminator, rather than Ardreal Holmes. We will never know, but one thing we do know is that Mekhrubon’s world title aspirations were too strong to be ruined by a knife-wielding bully.
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Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis Wins Welterweight Showdown in Atlantic City

In the showdown between undefeated welterweight champions Jaron “Boots Ennis walked away with the victory by technical knockout over Eamantis Stanionis and the WBA and IBF titles on Saturday.
No doubt. Ennis was the superior fighter.
“He’s a great fighter. He’s a good guy,” said Ennis.
Philadelphia’s Ennis (34-0, 30 KOs) faced Lithuania’s Stanionis (15-1, 10 KOs) at demonstrated an overpowering southpaw and orthodox attack in front of a sold-out crowd at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
It might have been confusing but whether he was in a southpaw stance or not Ennis busted the body with power shots and jabbed away in a withering pace in the first two rounds.
Stanionis looked surprised when his counter shots seemed impotent.
In the third round the Lithuanian fighter who trains at the Wild Card Gym in Hollywood, began using a rocket jab to gain some semblance of control. Then he launched lead rights to the jaw of Ennis. Though Stanionis connected solidly, the Philly fighter was still standing and seemingly unfazed by the blows.
That was a bad sign for Stanionis.
Ennis returned to his lightning jabs and blows to the body and Stanionis continued his marauding style like a Sherman Tank looking to eventually run over his foe. He just couldn’t muster enough firepower.
In the fifth round Stanionis opened up with a powerful body attack and seemed to have Ennis in retreat. But the Philadelphia fighter opened up with a speedy combination that ended with blood dripping from the nose of Stanionis.
It was not looking optimistic for the Lithuanian fighter who had never lost.
Stanionis opened up the sixth round with a three-punch combination and Ennis met him with a combination of his own. Stanionis was suddenly in retreat and Ennis chased him like a leopard pouncing on prey. A lightning five-punch combination that included four consecutive uppercuts delivered Stanionis to the floor for the count. He got up and survived the rest of the round.
After returning shakily to his corner, the trainer whispered to him and then told the referee that they had surrendered.
Ennis jumped in happiness and now holds the WBA and IBF welterweight titles.
“I felt like I was getting in my groove. I had a dream I got a stoppage just like this,” said Ennis.
Stanionis looked like he could continue, but perhaps it was a wise move by his trainer. The Lithuanian fighter’s wife is expecting their first child at any moment.
Meanwhile, Ennis finally proved the expectations of greatness by experts. It was a thorough display of superiority over a very good champion.
“The biggest part was being myself and having a live body in front of me,” said Ennis. “I’m just getting started.”
Matchroom Boxing promoter Eddie Hearn was jubilant over the performance of the Philadelphia fighter.
“What a wonderful humble man. This is one of the finest fighters today. By far the best fighter in the division,” said Hearn. “You are witnessing true greatness.”
Other Bouts
Former featherweight world champion Raymond Ford (17-1-1, 8 KOs) showed that moving up in weight would not be a problem even against the rugged and taller Thomas Mattice (22-5-1, 17 KOs) in winning by a convincing unanimous decision.
The quicksilver southpaw Ford ravaged Mattice in the first round then basically cruised the remaining nine rounds like a jackhammer set on automatic. Four-punch combinations pummeled Mattice but never put him down.
“He was a smart veteran. He could take a hit,” said Ford.
Still, there was no doubt on who won the super featherweight contest. After 10 rounds all three judges gave Ford every round and scored it 100-90 for the New Jersey fighter who formerly held the WBA featherweight title which was wrested from him by Nick Ball.
Shakhram Giyasov (17-0, 10 KOs) made good on a promise to his departed daughter by knocking out Argentina’s Franco Ocampo (17-3, 8 KOs) in their welterweight battle.
Giyasov floored Ocampo in the first round with an overhand right but the Argentine fighter was able to recover and fight on for several more rounds.
In the fourth frame, Giyasov launched a lead right to the liver and collapsed Ocampo with the body shot for the count of 10 at 1:57 of the fourth round.
“I had a very hard camp because I lost my daughter,” Giyasov explained. “I promised I would be world champion.”
In his second pro fight Omari Jones (2-0) needed only seconds to disable William Jackson (13-6-2) with a counter right to the body for a knockout win. The former Olympic medalist was looking for rounds but reacted to his opponent’s actions.
“He was a veteran he came out strong,” said Jones who won a bronze medal in the 2024 Paris Olympics. “But I just stayed tight and I looked for the shot and I landed it.”
After a feint, Jackson attacked and was countered by a right to the rib cage and down he went for the count at 1:40 of the first round in the welterweight contest.
Photo credit: Matchroom
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