Brandon Glanton snapped a two fight losing streak tonight in Florida on ProBox TV, stalking and smashing Carlos Fromenta across three dominant rounds. Glanton (18-2, 15 KO) was just a clear level above, and the difference in power and talent only got more and more obvious with each round.
Fromenta (12-2, 7 KO) spent most of the 1st round circling well and trying to keep distance, but didn’t do much to generate offense of his own and often got caught up on the ropes. Glanton took the openings, and caught a cornered Fromenta with a hard overhand right late in the 2nd round that led to a slow motion, tree-falling-over knockdown from which Fromenta never seemed fully recovered.
Fromenta tried to hold on and recover, but it cost him a point for holding early in the 3rd. Fromenta went down a second and final time in a sequence that started with a Glanton punch that landed over his ear. Fromenta started walking away with his back turned, but there was no order to stop, so Glanton swung a clean hook all the way around Fromenta’s head and caught him on the jaw. That was enough to send Fromenta reeling, and ultimately convince referee Emil Lombardi (who had a rough start to his evening, but more on that below) to end the night early.
Fantastic showing from Glanton, who picks up a regional WBA belt and reestablishes himself as a talented, entertaining contender in a wide open cruiserweight division.
Here’s the full card stream, cued up to the final sequence:
Mateo Tapia TKO-5 Eric Robles
Rugged effort from Eric Robles in the chief support, but toughness wasn’t enough to overcome the talent advantage Mateo Tapia brought to the ring. Tapia (16-0, 10 KO) started fast, knocking Robles down in the first minute of the opening round. Robles (9-3, 8 KO) used all nine and a half seconds to get up, and wound up with an unpleasant cut on the bridge of what appeared to be a broken nose somewhere in the 1st or early 2nd round.
Robles recovered from the knockdown and got aggressive in the 2nd, putting Tapia in the corner and landing some thumping shots to the head and body. Tapia was clearly the superior technical fighter, but almost too respectful of Robles, shelling up whenever Robles would attack.
Robles caught him with a body shot in the 4th round that had Tapia wincing visibly. But, Robles was just a little too wild, never really connecting with full power, and wasting a lot of energy on big punches that didn’t connect cleanly, or sometimes at all.
In the 5th round, Robles got cracked twice by Tapia right hands, with the second sending him staggering backwards. The referee almost intervened then, as the exchange wrecked Robles’s eye and left him bleeding from the mouth. The end of the round came before anything else could prompt a referee stoppage, but the damage was enough for the doctor to end the fight before the 6th round got started.
Najee Lopez TKO-4 Khaineel Wheeler
Najee Lopez got a serious early test from Khaineel Wheeler, who was not here to pad a prospect’s record. Wheeler hit the canvas early in the 1st round on what was ruled a slip, but got up and got after Lopez (8-0, 7 KO), who was shaken up and looked like he might be in trouble.
Wheeler (7-4, 6 KO) made some questionable choices starting in the 2nd round, laying up on the ropes and perhaps hoping Lopez would tire himself out. Instead, Lopez turned the tables, slipping hard uppercuts through Wheeler’s guard. A punishing combination from Lopez knocked Wheeler clear of the ropes, and a big left hand put him down hard. Wheeler did get up, but the fight was waved off based on his reaction.
No real complaints from Wheeler about the stoppage, or the live coverage audience about the action in the fight. A short one, but a fun one.
Darrelle Valsaint TKO-1 Diego Allan Ferreira Iablonski
Strange, strange stuff with this part of the show… The fight happened before the actual live broadcast, with ProBox having shared results and photos of Valsaint’s knockout online 35 minutes before it started airing this fight. For some reason, ProBox tried to play it back plausibly live rather than identify it as a prerecorded fight. BUT, it wasn’t very plausible, as the arena crowd jumped around on screen when they cut to the prerecorded action under a graphic, and they also forgot to take out the live arena music for half of the first round. Just a weird, chaotic, confusing situation, and no real reason not to identify it as a prerecorded event.
Turns out, it was chaos and confusion in the ring earlier, too! Valsaint (10-0, 8 KO) was dominant, had Diego Allan Ferreira Iablonski (10-2, 6 KO) rocked and on wooden legs late in the 1st round, and referee Emil Lombardi intervened without an actual knockdown. He didn’t actually wave off the fight, or start a count… He just eventually moved out of the way and reset the action.
Until, that is, he jumped in again, apparently because he thought the round was over. Microphones picked him up saying he thought he’d heard the signal to end the round, but that didn’t actually come until he restarted the fight. And then, he stepped in and stopped the fight as the round bell rang, anyway. Very bizarre, very confusing, and a weird result that led to multiple commentary jokes about Valsaint having unofficially earned three knockouts in one fight.
Here’s the bizarre finish, with the embedded video timed to the start of peak confusion:
Jaycob Gomez UD-6 Robenilson Vieira de Jesus
The opener presented a substantial age difference between 21 year old Jaycob Gomez and 36 year old Robenilson Vieira de Jesus. You could see it in their faces, and you could see it in their trousers, with Vieira de Jesus electing to hike his up about 5 inches shy of his armpits.
Gomez (8-0-1, 5 KO) looked good, and had Vieira de Jesus (5-1, 1 KO) shaken up to the body in the 3rd. Vieira de Jesus’s tried to work from distance, and his greatest success came with check left hook counters. But, he took a debatable knockdown in the 4th when Gomez landed one of his own. Gomez took a well-earned unanimous decision on official scores of 58-55, 59-54, and 60-53.