Undercard Results From Thomas & Mack

David Diaz wins big in Las Vegas

On the undercard of the WBC heavyweight title fight between the champ Hasim Rahman and his challenger Oleg Maskaev, lightweight David Diaz won the WBC interim title with a tenth round KO of Jose Armando Santa Cruz.

Chicagoan Diaz, 30, was getting beaten in round after round until he turned the tables in the tenth and twice dropped Santa Cruz to the deck. Referee Richard Steele stopped the fight with 40 seconds left in the round.

“I told you we would steal the show,” Diaz said after the bout. “We discovered he couldn’t take body shots. He has too big of a body to come down to 135.”

In other action, Humberto Soto KO’d Ivan Valle in round number four of a WBC super featherweight eliminator.

Also on the card, super welterweight Vanes Martirosyan improved his record to 10-0 with a unanimous decision over Marcus Brooks, even though he probably broke his right hand in the early going