Jesus Cuellar outpoints Jonathan Oquendo, retains featherweight title

Dan Rafael, ESPN Senior Writer

NEW YORK -- Featherweight titleholder Jesus Cuellar had an easy time with Jonathan Oquendo, easily outpointing him in a snoozer on Saturday night at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.

Fighting on the undercard of the all-Brooklyn middleweight title bout between Daniel Jacobs and Peter Quillin, Cuellar retained his secondary 126-pound belt for the second time, winning 120-107, 116-111 and 116-111. ESPN.com also scored the fight 120-107 for Cuellar.

"We worked very hard in the training camp. We knew he would be very difficult," Cuellar said. "I wanted a knockout, but because of the movement it was not possible."

Cuellar earned $200,000 for the fight, and Oquendo earned $100,000.

Cuellar, a southpaw, got off to a quick start. He went right after Oquendo, launching right hooks and straight left hands. Cuellar had Oquendo on the run as he walked him down in the third round.

In the fourth round, referee Ricky Gonzalez credited Cuellar (27-2, 21 KOs) with a knockdown when Oquendo (26-5, 16 KOs) went down. However, television replays showed that Oquendo tripped on Cuellar's foot.

Cuellar, 28, of Argentina, appeared to hurt Oquendo in the eighth round, landing a series of shots that backed him into the ropes as he opened a commanding lead.

It was a poor performance from Oquendo, 32, of Puerto Rico, who rarely engaged and spent a lot of the fight moving away from Cuellar.

Oquendo could not find the magic he did in his last fight, when he scored a career-best victory by majority decision against former titlist Jhonny Gonzalez on Sept. 12 on the Floyd Mayweather-Andre Berto undercard.

According to CompuBox punch statistics, Cuellar landed 237 of 994 punches (24 percent), and Oquendo landed 167 of 639 (26 percent).

Algieri wins decision against Bone

Welterweight Chris Algieri (20-2, 8 KOs), a former junior welterweight world titleholder, shook off a two-fight losing streak to win a unanimous decision against Erick Bone (16-2, 8 KOs).

Algieri, 31, the crowd favorite from Huntington, New York, looked pretty sharp in winning 97-92, 97-92 and 95-94. ESPN.com also had Algieri winning 97-92. In his previous two fights, he lost a one-sided decision to Manny Pacquiao in a world title fight 13 months ago and then lost a much closer decision to Amir Khan on May 29.

"I'm back in the win column, which feels fantastic. Bone is a strong and durable fighter. This fight was everything to him," said Algieri, who had not won since June 14, 2014, also at the Barclays Center, where he got knocked down twice but won a disputed split decision and a junior welterweight belt from Ruslan Provodnikov.

Algieri's jab was in Bone's face throughout the fight, and in the third round he gave Bone a bloody nose and closed the round with a hard right hand. But by the sixth round, Algieri was sporting a black and blue mark under his left eye.

In the eighth round, Algieri landed a right hand to Bone's shoulder that knocked him off balance and down to the canvas for a knockdown. Algieri had Bone, 26, of Ecuador, in some trouble late in the ninth round when he rocked him during a toe-to-toe exchange that fired up the crowd.

After the loss to Pacquiao, Algieri fired career-long trainer Tim Lane and was in his second fight under the tutelage of John David Jackson.

"I did exactly what my corner told me not to do," Algieri said. "They didn't want me to get too excited. I knew I had to break him down. Bone is a hell of a fighter. I probably fought on the inside too much. I caught a lot of elbows and head butts."

Bone lost his second fight in a row; he was previously stopped by former welterweight titleholder Shawn Porter in the fifth round in a March 13 bout he took on two days' notice.

Light heavyweight Marcus Browne (17-0, 13 KOs), a 2012 U.S. Olympian from Staten Island, New York, stopped Mexico's battle-tested Francisco Sierra (27-10-1, 24 KOs) in the fourth round of a cruiserweight fight because of a terrible gash over his left eye.

Browne took charge of the fight in the first round, landing a clean right hand that busted open a cut over Sierra's eye. The cut poured blood down Sierra's face and chest, and it clearly bothered him as the fight went on. Sierra was blinking away blood in the third round, and just after the bell rang to begin the fourth round, referee Earl Brown called a timeout so ringside doctor could again look at the cut. The doctor deemed it too severe for the fight to continue, and Brown waved it off.

"I saw I cut him early, but I knew I had to stay persistent and consistent," Browne said. "I worked my jab and kept working it. I felt like I seized this opportunity to put my name out there. It's an honor for me to fight at the Barclays Center for the 10th time. It was a nice stoppage, but not necessarily a stoppage that you want. But a stoppage is a stoppage."

Browne typically fights in the 175-pound light heavyweight division but came in at 177.4 pounds because Sierra was over the contract weight of 178, weighing in at 183.

Junior middleweight titleholder Yuri Foreman (33-2, 9 KOs), a former world titleholder from Brooklyn, returned from a two-year retirement and outboxed Lenwood Dozier (9-10-1, 4 KOs), of Suitland, Maryland, to win an eight-round decision. Foreman, 35, looked rather fresh as he bounced around on his toes and snapped out a solid jab in defeating Dozier in a fight that he won by surprisingly close scores of 77-75 on all three scorecards.

"Eight rounds felt great," Foreman said. "I felt I could have easily done more. A little bit of rust, but shook it off quickly. I agree with the decision. Maybe should have been a little wider, but glad to be back and looking forward to getting back into ring again. Take a week or two off and then back to training."

When Foreman outpointed Daniel Santos to win a junior middleweight world title in 2009, he became the first Orthodox Jewish boxer to win a world title in more than 70 years. Now Foreman, who lost his belt to Miguel Cotto by ninth-round stoppage because of a knee injury in 2010, is a rabbi. He came out of retirement because he missed boxing and made sure that his fight began after sundown, when the Sabbath ended.

With strong fan bases of several hundred cheering them both on, light heavyweight Joe Smith Jr. (20-1, 16 KOs), a construction worker from Shirley, New York, won a hard-fought unanimous decision against Ozone Park, New York, firefighter Will Rosinsky (19-3, 10 KOs).

Smith won 98-92, 97-93 and 96-94 in a fight in which they traded shots on the inside from start to finish. Smith cut Rosinsky on the side of his left eye in the third round, and it bled for most of the fight, leading the referee to call a timeout so the ringside physician could examine it before the start of the seventh round.

Cruiserweight Luis Garcia (13-0, 10 KOs), a Cuban defector based in Ireland who had been mired in promotional and managerial issues, returned from a three-year layoff to knock out Baltimore's Willie Williams (14-11-2, 4 KOs) in 63 seconds.

Junior welterweight John Hernandez (6-1, 1 KO), of Huntington, New York, rolled to a shutout four-round decision against Buffalo's Jack Grady (0-3-1), winning 40-36 on all three scorecards.

Featherweight Titus Williams (4-0, 2 KOs), of Elmont, New York, and Mexico's Emmanuel Castro (2-2, 2 KOs) put on an action-packed six-rounder in which they were both knocked down in the first round and Castro hit the deck again in the third round. But in the end, Williams was the dominant fighter, winning 60-53, 60-54 and 59-54.
 

Source:  espn.go.com/boxing/story/_/id/14297381/jesus-cuellar-outpoints-jonathan-oquendo-retains-featherweight-title