Saturday Boxing Results: Gamboa and Garcia Dominant, Pirog Wins, Molitor Loses

Busy slate of fights from around the world today, and don't forget to check out Friday's results if you missed anything. We'll update this when a few more notable results roll in.

First off, here's what we've already covered, with links to the recaps:

• HBO Boxing After Dark (Atlantic City, NJ): Yuriorkis Gamboa TKO-4 Jorge Solis, Mikey Garcia RTD-10 Matt Remillard, Teon Kennedy UD-12 Jorge Diaz, Glen Tapia UD-6 Eberto Medina, Camilo Perez KO-1 Desi Williams, Miguel Cartagena UD-4 Omar Gonzalez, Tom Zbikowski UD-4 Caleb Grummet
• Sky Saturday Fight Night (Wigan, England): Denton Vassell UD-12 Bethuel Ushona, Matty Askin TKO-6 Neil Dawson
• Ekaterinburg, Russia: Dmitry Pirog UD-12 Javier Maciel, Felix Diaz TKO-3 Andrey Berdyshev, Alisher Rahimov UD-12 Rustam Nugaev, Vyacheslav Glazkov UD-8 Denis Bakhtov

Now on to the rest.

Xalapa, Mexico

• Leo Santa Cruz TKO-6 Stephane Jamoye: Santa Cruz (15-0-1, 7 KO) is a 22-year-old bantamweight managed by Cameron Dunkin, and this is his best win to date. Jamoye (20-3, 12 KO) is actually younger, at 21, but the Belgian had more experience coming in, having only lost close scrapes with Tomoki Kameda and European champ Jamie McDonnell.
  
• Jose Salgado TKO-3 Everardo Morales: Salgado, 21, is now 24-1 (21 KO), while Morales falls to 34-16-2 (23 KO) with the loss. Morales' last fight was against Hugo Cazares (TKO-7 loss), and he's been in with tons of top talent over the years -- Pongsaklek Wonjongkam, Koki Kameda, Topo Rosas, Omar Narvaez, Tomas Rojas, among others.
  
• Marco Antonio Periban KO-1 Alfredo Mejia: Periban is one of those raw power prospects at 168 who tends to get people excited really early, but despite that this isn't much to get excited about, he's got some interesting marks on his record already. For one thing, he's already triumphed through adversity, coming off the canvas to win a six-rounder last year. And he's stopped Jason Naugler, who is the only guy to last the distance with David Lemieux, and Darnell Boone, who has an iron chin.

Johannesburg, South Africa

• Takalani Ndlovu UD-12 Steve Molitor: Well, third time was a charm for Ndlovu, and damn it all, I really wanted to make this upset call, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Scores were 118-110 (twice) and 116-112, all in favor of the home fighter, who improves to 1-2 against Molitor, and 32-6 (18 KO) overall, plus he finally picks up that trinket the IBF has been seemingly desperate to give him for years now. It's a really big blow to Molitor (33-2, 12 KO), who is new at Top Rank, and frankly might not last terribly long there unless they see him as a valuable opponent at 122 or moving up to 126. They do have guys he could fight. But Molitor just hasn't been the same since Celestino Caballero completely demolished him on Showtime. I don't know if he was really "exposed" that night or if he was just never really all that good, or if he just hit a wall in his career. But whatever it is, he's truly not the same fighter. That's not just chatter. Ndlovu is a guy Molitor pretty handily beat in their first two encounters, but this one by all reports really wasn't close at all.
• Moruti Mthalane TKO-5 Johnriel Casimero: Reports are that this was a hell of fight while it lasted, a war from the first round until Mthalane (27-2, 18 KO) wore out the Filipino road warrior Casimero (14-2, 8 KO) in the fifth round. Casimero was coming up from 108 pounds to 112, where Mthalane has established himself as one of the top dogs. That's a division I'm going to really look at for the rankings update this week (among others). There might need to be some changes made.

Kempton Park, South Africa

• Thomas Oosthuizen KO-9 Evert Bravo: Ah, the OTHER Johannesburg card. Oosthuizen (12-0-1, 9 KO) is one of those guys I really wish we could see more of, along with the next winner from this card. The guys out of Africa always intrigue me. More often than not, if you start hearing about them, they can fight.
• Isaac Chilemba UD-12 Vikapita Meroro: A very quick turnaround for Chilemba (17-1-1, 8 KO), who just last month won a close decision against Maxim Vlasov on Friday Night Fights.

Hamburg, Germany

• Alexander Dimitrenko KO-12 Albert Sosnowski: I was hoping against hope that Sosnowski would pull this one out, just because I really do like the guy. I don't think he's very good, but he tries. On the other side, I also don't think Dimitrenko is very good, but he...is tall. If Dimitrenko were just slightly worse than he is, and thus not able to contend regularly on even the European level, he would get so many paydays as a guy fighters use to prepare for the Klitschkos. Not because he really fights like them or because he's near their level, but because he's tall, and that's really about all you can replicate. Tomasz Adamek is fighting Kevin McBride and Michael Grant to acclimate himself to height, for God's sake. Dimitrenko is a gold mine and doesn't even know it! In all seriousness, this was reportedly a pretty nasty KO. Dimitrenko improves to 31-1 (21 KO), while Sosnowski falls to 46-4-1 (28 KO).
• Rakhim Chakhkiev TKO-1 Alex Mogylewski: "The Machine" is now 9-0 (7 KO).

Mexicali, Mexico (Friday)

• Jorge Paez Jr. UD-12 Jose Luis Castillo: Back in 1999, a 26-year-old battler named Jose Luis Castillo took on faded Mexican veteran Jorge Paez. Paez was just short of his 34th birthday, but was older than that in ring years, having been through the wars and up and down the road in his 15-year professional career. Castillo knocked out Paez in the fifth round, and while the veteran would go on to fight another four years and never lose again, that was realistically the end of the relevant portion of his career. Castillo would go on to compete in the greatest fight in recent memory, plus give Floyd Mayweather Jr. a couple of stiff tests and win the legitimate lightweight world championship. Here we are, just shy of 12 years later, and we have a 37-year-old Castillo, fighting still because he needs the money, losing to the lightly-regarded, 23-year-old son of the warrior he knocked off to start his own "relevant career" over a decade ago. Yeah, that's about right.

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

• Carson Jones KO-3 Rahman Yusubov: You might recall Jones (29-8-2, 14 KO) as the originally scheduled comeback opponent for Antonio Margarito, before Texas "wouldn't take" the fight as scheduled on the Pacquiao-Clottey undercard. Jones is still only 24, and has kept an unusually active schedule for a young American fighter.
  

Punchbowl, Australia

• Shannan Taylor UD-12 Tim Kanofski: Yeah, Shannan Taylor is still fighting -- wait, there's a place called Punchbowl? Taylor, now a super middleweight at 38, now has a career record of 51-9-3 (36 KO). Why, it seems like just yesterday that he was fighting Shane Mosley, and it basically was just yesterday that Anthony Mundine decided he was a proper opponent.