Results from the Big Apple Where KO Artist Edgar Berlanga Won Inartistically

A sellout crowd of 5,158 crammed into the Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden tonight and it’s a safe bet that almost all of them were Puerto Rican. And although the four Puerto Ricans at the top of the card – Edgar Berlanga, Xander Zayas, John Bauza, and Henry Lebron – all won as expected, in the aggregate they provided little in the way of fireworks and the guess is that the crowd filed out meekly.

Super middleweight Edgar Berlanga, who generated a tremendous amount of buzz while opening his career with 16 straight first-round knockouts, was extended the distance for the third straight fight. Looking very one-dimensional, Berlanga had trouble landing a clean punch on 37-year-old Canadian veteran Steve Rolls who fought most of the fight on his back foot but was never in serious danger.

In the end, Berlanga won a unanimous decision, but Rolls (21-2) had a shade the best of it over the second half of the fight, winning three of the 10 rounds on one of the cards and four rounds on another, a moral victory of sorts for the 37-year-old Canadian who was blasted out in four frames by Gennadiy Golovkin on his previous visit to New York.

Co-Feature

In the 8-round co-feature, 19-year-old super welterweight phenom Xander Zayas threw the proverbial kitchen sink at Quincy LaVallais, but couldn’t put him away. Zayas was credited with tagging LaVallais with 47 power punches in the second round alone, but the teak-tough LaVallais (12-3-1) managed to stay the course.

Zayas improved his ledger to 13-0, winning every round on all three scorecards. To date, Zayas, who has nine knockouts to his credit, has yet to lose a round!

Bauza

In the opener on ESPN’s main platform, San Juan-born super lightweight John Bauza improved to 17-0 (7) with a lopsided 8-round decision over Toronto-area veteran Tony Luis (29-5). The judges had it 80-72, 79-73, and 78-74.

The scores were misleading. Bauza clearly had the best of it during the first three rounds, but Luis did well from that point on, often pinning Bauza against the ropes and smothering his punches.

Lebron

Super featherweight Henry Lebron appeared in the final undercard bout on ESPN+. He had no problem turning away Honduran veteran Josec Ruiz who lost every round before referee Benjy Esteves decided that there was no point in continuing, waving the bout off at the 2:23 mark of round seven.

Lebron improved to 15-0 (10). Ruiz, who protested the stoppage – he hadn’t previously been stopped – declined to 23-6-3.

Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank via Getty Images

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