A left hook ends it
Nestor Bravo sat down on the canvas and did not look like a man planning to get back up. Isaac “Pitbull” Cruz had landed a left hook flush on the chin, 1:30 into the sixth round at Pechanga Arena in San Diego. The referee counted him out.
Cruz keeps his WBC interim light welterweight title and moves to 29-3-2 with 19 knockouts. The stoppage landed in the early hours European time, and it closed a night that looked closer to a wrestling match than a boxing one.
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Five rounds of holding
The pattern was set inside three minutes. Cruz walked straight at Bravo and put him down with a left hook in the opening round. Bravo survived the barrage that followed by wrapping both arms around the champion every time Cruz stepped into punching range.
Referee Thomas Taylor warned him, then took a point in the second. Cruz scored his second knockdown in that same round as Bravo’s legs gave way again. The third brought low blows from the Puerto Rican, enough to break up the action more than once, though no further deduction came. In the fourth, Bravo threw Cruz to the canvas and lost another point, with Taylor telling him a disqualification would cost him his purse.
Bravo drops to 24-2 with 17 knockouts, and very little of what he did on Saturday night resembled offence. Cruz swept the fifth without needing a knockdown, then walked him onto the hook in the sixth.
The name he actually wants
Cruz did not waste the postfight microphone on his opponent.
“Hey Ryan, I am here. My next fight for you. Come on, Ryan. Come on,” he said, speaking to Ryan Garcia.
Garcia had named Cruz as a preferred opponent after stopping Conor Benn last week, so the interest runs both ways. The obstacle is the scale. Cruz holds an interim belt at 140 pounds. Garcia has been firm that his next significant fight happens at 147, and nobody has yet explained who is supposed to move.
Two knockdowns, two point deductions and a clean finish is the sort of night that strengthens a negotiating position. Whether it shifts Garcia seven pounds is a separate question.
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