Welterweight fringe contender Ed Paredes wanted to impress tonight in the ESPN Friday Night Fights co-feature, and he did what he could against the opponent he faced, stopping Manuel Leyva in the seventh round in Hollywood, Fla.

Paredes (30-3-1, 20 KO) won his eighth straight, and is now 9-0-1 in his last ten fights. After a slow start in the first round, the fight became all Paredes, as the 26-year-old simply had too much physical strength for the blown up Leyva (21-5, 12 KO), who didn't look in any way like a welterweight, and very clearly didn't punch like one, either.

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If you could say anything bad about Paredes tonight, it's that at times he seems to wait too much, and his killer instinct appears to be lacking just a little bit.

After putting Leyva down twice in the fifth round, on a pair of good right uppercuts, he laid back in the sixth after failing to finish Leyva in the previous round's final 20 seconds.

In the seventh, though, he found Leyva with a hard left hook to the body, which sent the Mexican fighter down. Another right uppercut clipped Leyva on his way to the mat, and referee Samuel Burgos called a halt to the action at 1:29 of the round.

Some of the talk about Paredes now is that yes, he is a good fighter, but just lacks the X-factor stuff to get to an elite level. That may be true, but given that he's not dull, I'm sure he'll remain a regular on Friday Night Fights for a while longer, at worst.