Leo Santa Cruz proves that he is L.A.'s finest

Los Angeles, CA--The explosive featherweight showdown betweenLeo Santa Cruz and Abner Mares turned out to be better than expected. Santa Cruz turned in a career best performance, in which he captured the vacant WBA “Super” featherweight strap along with the WBC “Diamond” featherweight trinket via a hard earned majority decision last Saturday night. The scorecards read 117-111 twice, while the third judge saw it even at 114. Santa Cruz boxed effectively, while Mares looked to goon Santa Cruz inside.

Both Santa Cruz and Mares traded bombs until the final bell towed. The fight of the year candidate was the kind of scrap that would make the late Arturo Gatti proud. The two Mexican-Americans, whom reside in the Los Angeles area, brought the passionate crowd of 13,109 at the Staples Center into a frenzy. Mares, the bigger of the two pugilists, opened up the contest by imposing his physical strength. He swarmed the taller Santa Cruz during the main event of the third installment of the Premier Boxing Champions series onESPN.

Mares’ game plan was to smother Santa Cruz, in an attempt to negate Santa Cruz’s reach, which is his bread and butter. However, Santa Cruz was able to make the proper adjustments by stepping back, and then establishing his distance by jabbing.

“I was surprised Abner [Mares] came out so strong,” Santa Cruz, 27, now 31-0-1, (17) would say. “He came right at me but we figured him out and got the win.”

In the middle rounds a clash of heads between the two combatants resulted in a bad cut on the right side of Mares’ face. But to the credit of Mares’ corner, the blood was kept under control, and was never a factor in the outcome of the fight.

“It was a close fight, but I thought I won the fight,” a dejected Mares told the press during the post-fight presser, who with the loss now drops to 29-2-1, (15). “I thought I pulled it off. My plan was to box him, but I started out really fast. I felt good but my corner told me to box more, so I did that. It was a good fight.”

Santa Cruz-Mares was a fight that had been discussed for quite some time. However, the setback Mares encountered two years ago, when he was stopped by Jhonny Gonzalez in one round prevented the fight from ever materializing. After the loss, Mares went back to the drawing board, and reeled of three consecutive victories against lesser quality opposition, but resulted in Mares getting his ‘mojo’ back.

During the exact time frame, Santa Cruz remained active, most recently cruising to an easy unanimous decision victory over Jose Cayetano on the Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao undercard. Santa Cruz, who threw a total of over 1,000 punches against Mares, is one of the many talented fighters in the stable of advisor Al Haymon. (The creator of the PBC series.) In some instances he has even been referred to as the ‘god-son’ of Haymon.

Haymon, who has a keen eye for talent, recruited Mares immediately, once his contract with Golden Boy Promotions expired a year ago. The rest is history, and the fight was made Haymon was the missing piece of the puzzle needed in order to seal the deal.

As the fight progressed, Santa Cruz hurt Mares with a body shot in the 4th round that forced Mares to back up. Once Santa Cruz was able to establish his distance, he then developed a rhythm, and then able took control of the fight. The more Mares backed up, the more evident it became that he couldn’t win the fight going backwards. By the later rounds the tempo, and back and forth action continued, and picked up in rounds the championship rounds, 11 and 12.

“My dad told me that we could beat him by boxing,” Santa Cruz said. “We want to be aggressive, but tonight we had to box him too. And that’s how we got it done.”
Besides claiming two vacant featherweight titles, Santa Cruz earned the bragging rights of being best featherweight in the Los Angeles area.

With names such as Gary Russell, Jr., Guillermo Rigondeaux, Carl Frampton, Scott Quigg, Vasyl Lomanchenko, and Nicholas Walters, it’s obvious that the featherweight division is stacked. However, due to Russell, Jr. being advised by Haymon, a showdown between Santa Cruz and Russell, Jr. is inevitable.

With Santa Cruz and Mares fighting on free television, it was a travesty that no one was talking about the fight beforehand. Instead, so-called fight fans were talking about the spectacle taking place 7 miles away, at the Forum, between Shane Mosley and Ricardo Mayorga. It should make you wonder, why is Haymon being sued by his competitors.