Gary Russell Jr. knocked out Jhonny Gonzales in the 4th round to win the WBC Featherweight Championship. This fight was completely one sided as Russell dictated the
pace of the fight and landed punches at will. Gonzales was escorted to the ring by former WWE superstar Rey Mysterio Jr. and former WCW superstar Konan. That was about the only highlight for Gonzalez in this fight as he was absolutely outclassed in every possible way. The big question coming into this fight was - could Gary Russell Jr. take a big punch from Gonzalez? It turns out that Gonzalez could not take a punch from Russell Jr. Gary Russell Jr. was widely criticized as having very light hands and not being able to knockout opponents. I guess he shut those critics up tonight.
“This is the kind of performance I expect, but you can’t get these every time,” said Russell. “No one knows how hard we trained or what we do in the gym. We work so hard and put all the work in. This is really exciting. What I really want, though, is to please everyone around me, especially the people who have been with me since the beginning. There was never any plan for me to run around and turn it into a track meet. My plan was to stand in and wait for Gonzalez to throw that wide left hook. I was trying to bait him to throw it, and he did.”
The undercard fight had Jermell Charlo winning a unanimous decision over Vanes Martirosyan. This was a very difficult fight for both men. Virtually all of the rounds were close and it was tough to score. This fight really could have went either way. The scores were 97-93, 96-94, 96-94 all for Jermell Charlo. Ringside Reporter had the fight scored 96-94 for Martirosyan. It's hard to read too much off of Charlo's performance in this fight given the fact that he and Martirosyan used to be sparring partners. They knew each other very well and it showed. Very good and competitive fight.
