Yuriorkis Gamboa and Erislandy Lara, two red-hot Cuban prospects, scored easy first round knockouts in their bouts, but unfortunately the main event featuring lightweight puncher Breidis Prescott stole the show for all the wrong reasons.
Gatekeeper Humberto Toledo fought dirty for much of the bout, losing convincingly along the way, and in the 10th and final round, with 1:58 left to go, Toledo bit Prescott to cause a disqualification.
In the TV opener, Lara (4-0, 3 KO) knocked down Keith Gross (3-1, 1 KO) with a beautiful left hand before continuing the assault with a nasty body shot and finishing him with an uppercut at just over one minute of the opening round. Gamboa (14-0, 12 KO) followed that up by landing one big right hand and knocking out Walter Estrada (35-9, 24 KO) in 35 seconds.
A heavyweight swing bout was shown to kill some time before the main event. Prescott (21-0, 18 KO) dominated but did so in an ugly fashion, showing many things he needs to work on, such as punch accuracy, an ability to do more than flick a few jabs that lead to nothing, or punch one-at-a-time. He never seemed to get into any rhythm, which could be partially blamed on Toledo's continual roughhouse tactics, including blatantly holding behind the head on numerous occasions. Toledo was knocked down in the latter part of the fight.
The bite DQ is ridiculous and completely inexcusable, and should pretty much seal Toledo's fate as far as American TV spots go. He's a tough sell; it's not like he's Mike Tyson or anything. As a regular gatekeeper with some skills, he was an attractive test. With this on his sheet, he loses some appeal.
We'll be back tomorrow night with live, round-by-round coverage and scoring of all four fights on Top Rank's pay-per-view. Join us then!