Saturday Results: Rojas and Ponce de Leon appear headed for showdown

Three cards from Mexico headlined Saturday night's action, so we'll start with those.

From Merida:

• Elio Rojas (22-1, 13 KO) UD-12 Guty Espadas Jr. (45-8, 28 KO) to retain the WBC featherweight title. Rojas won on scores of 120-108, 119-109 and 119-109, a virtual shutout that should surprise no one, as he's a genuinely quality fighter and Espadas came in as a very questionable title challenger propped up by his absurd #3 ranking from the WBC.
• Derric Rossy (24-2, 14 KO) TKO-2 Joseph Harris (10-11, 7 KO). This was the ninth time Harris has been knocked out, and Rossy now moves on to March 6, when he fights Zack Page (20-27-2, 7 KO) on the untelevised Alexander-Urango undercard in Connecticut. As Brick pointed out the other day when we were discussing the undercard, Page is a better fighter than his record. More bothersome about Rossy fighting Page than just the fact that he's fighting him, though, is that it's a rematch of a UD-8 Rossy won in 2007. But I guess there's only so much to do with Derric, as the two times he's really stepped it up in class, he was stopped by Eddie Chambers and Alexander Dimitrenko. He did get his best win last year against Carl Davis Drumond. Maybe he should fight Tye Fields.

From Mexico City:

• Daniel Ponce de Leon (38-2, 32 KO) KO-3 Orlando Cruz (16-2-1, 7 KO). Cruz isn't a bad fighter, but we've learned he's probably not a coming star with his last two fights. He was stopped by Cornelius Lock in the opening bout of the Mayweather-Marquez PPV, and last night he was bombed out by former 122-pound titlist Ponce de Leon. Of course, the main reason anyone knows him is he "upset" Leonilo Miranda on ShoBox last year. Miranda went on to lose a 10-round decision to a guy who came in with a 10-13 record in his next fight. More importantly, Ponce de Leon picked up one of the WBC's regional trinkets in this fight, and it appears he'll head toward a fight with Elio Rojas, which would hopefully get on American TV somewhere. Sometimes I think ShoBox would do better to pick up a few more fights like that instead of forcing in non-prospects the way they often do.
• Lucas Matthysse (26-0, 24 KO) TKO-4 Vivian Harris (29-4-1, 19 KO). "Vicious" Vivian came into this one not having had a real fight since September 2007, when Junior Witter flattened him in England. It took him 13 months just to return to the ring, and when he did, he fought a scrub at a Medieval Times in Lyndhurst, New Jersey. Matthysse is an Argentine bomber, and apparently this fight was all-out war for as long as it lasted, with both men firing heavy bombs. Eventually it was a big right hand from Matthysse that forced the referee's hand. Harris felt the stoppage was early. This was Vivian's first fight under the Golden Boy banner, and to be honest it seemed to me as though they were making him a sacrificial lamb for Matthysse, but it sounds like he showed he's still got the drive to fight.

From Acapulco:

• Giovani Segura (23-1-1, 19 KO) TKO-4 Walter Tello (14-4, 6 KO) to retain the WBA junior flyweight title. This fight had no business happening. Segura is a legit titlist, a top fighter at 108, and for the WBA to sanction a title fight with Segura and Tello is absolutely absurd, and if you had any respect for them before, lose some because of this. Last July in Panama, Tello fought Luis Alberto Rios (9-0 at the time) for the Panamanian strawweight belt, as well as the WBA Fedalatin strawweight title. He was stopped in four. All he'd done since then is beat a guy who came in 5-3. That's literally all he'd done. So how did he get a title shot? Segura predictably beat the crap out of him. This fight was probably a bigger mismatch on paper than the Vic Darchinyan-Rodrigo Guerrero bonanza coming on March 6.
• Urban Antillon (27-1, 20 KO) TKO-3 Luis Arceo (22-10-2, 15 KO). Pure rebound fight for Antillon, who was stunned last summer by Miguel Acosta when he got his first shot at a major title, albeit an interim title. Kind of back to the drawing board with this win, but he won and now he'll move on. He's still got a lot of promise.
• Omar Chavez (20-0-1, 15 KO) KO-1 Eugenio Lopez (12-16-1, 8 KO). I think I'm more comfortable calling Omar "Julio Cesar Chavez Jr.'s brother" than I am "Julio Cesar Chavez's son," if you know what I mean. Just like Junior, Omar's career is being padded like crazy. I know he's "only 20," but Saul Alvarez is 19 and they're about to match him with Matthew Hatton, who is at least competent if not very good, and Alvarez has had several fights that will be better than anything Omar takes in the next two years.

Other Results:

• Takefumi Sakata (36-5-2, 17 KO) KO-1 Eric Diaz Siregar (9-10-3, 1 KO). Sakata continued taking out his frustrations on bums, getting this 31-year-old Indonesian (birth name: Muhammad Rizal Siregar) out in 2:44. Sakata has taken three fights like this in a row now since Denkaosan Kaovichit knocked the crap out of him in the second round on New Year's Eve 2008.
• Fres Oquendo (32-5, 21 KO) RTD-9 Demetrice King (15-18, 13 KO). This bout took place at the wonderful Horseshoe Casino in lovely Hammond, Indiana. King is, like Zack Page, better than his record, but that doesn't make him good. Oquendo wins his third straight since being outright robbed against James Toney.
• Oleg Yefimovych (18-1, 11 KO) UD-12 Andrey Isaev (22-2, 7 KO). This was for the European featherweight title, and Yefimovych made his fourth successful defense of the belt in Donetsk, Ukraine.