:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/66158599/QuigleyMarin_Hoganphotos.5.jpg)
Jason Quigley thrashed late replacement opponent Fernando Marin in tonight’s Golden Boy Thursday Night Fights main event, capping a rare night of uneventful mismatches for what has been a very good series to this point.
Quigley (18-1, 14 KO) hammered away at Marin (16-5-3, 12 KO) for the first two rounds, totally dominating the action, which was expected. Marin is really a natural welterweight, while Quigley is a natural middleweight, and this fight was fought at a catchweight north of 160 but short of 168.
In the third round, Quigley drilled Marin in the right eye with a right hand, and Marin went down awkwardly in obvious pain. The referee rightly stopped the fight there, official time of 1:47 of the third round.
“I was catching him with some lovely shots in the second round,” Quigley said. “He’s got one hard head, I’ll tell you that. I didn’t get much time to prepare, but I knew he could take some heavy shots, and he showed that tonight again. I was happy to get him out of there in the third round.”
Quigley credited his work with new trainer Andy Lee for his improvements, saying he felt happy with tonight’s performance.
“I think everybody knows me, that I like to get into a brawl,” he said. “That has been my downfall in the past. Working with Andy has been great. I’m maturing and progressing every time. It’s the first fight that I actually enjoyed my performance in a long time. I made a lot of sacrifices and changes. My career was in limbo for a little bit. I think tonight showed that I did the best thing possible for me.”
Quigley did have a specific opponent in mind going forward.
“I’ve never called anybody out in my life,” he said. “But give me (Jaime) Munguia. He beat a fellow Irishman of mine. I’m not calling him out with disrespect or anything like that. I’m a fighter who wants to be a world champion.”
Ferdinand Kerobyan TKO-2 Azael Cosio
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19625714/KerobyanCosio_Hoganphotos2.jpg)
A very odd fight, as Cosio (21-9-2, 18 KO) was slipping and sliding all over the place due to his shoes, which his corner reported after the fight Cosio had worn before, so it wasn’t a newness, but it was a surprise. Because of the inability to get any traction, Cosio went down two times in the first round and again in the second, and he was stopped there by Kerobyan, who goes to 14-1 (9 KO).
It’s a sad outcome for Cosio, who had members of his corner racing to the back between the first and second rounds trying to get some tape to wrap on his shoes, which we’ve seen done before. But he wasn’t able to get out of round two. Most likely the result wouldn’t have been much different anyway, but Cosio was hopeless here with the shoes. He couldn’t sit down on his own punches, and power is the only real hope he had. And if you’re wondering, it wasn’t the canvas; nobody else was slipping around.
Kerobyan, 22, will now be heading into camp with Jessie Vargas, who is preparing to face Mikey Garcia on Feb. 29.
“This was a great way to start off the year, and I’m just going to keep it going,” Kerobyan said.
Mihai Nistor TKO-1 Jaime Solorio
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19625715/NistorSolario_Hoganphotos1.jpg)
Solorio (12-4-2, 9 KO) is a 31-year-old fighter who fought at 154 from 2008-10, didn’t fight again until 2017 (no explanation on the TV but they didn’t have time to get into it, really), and returned as a super middleweight. In 2018 he fought at 183 pounds. Here he returned at 234, and, well, he looked like a natural junior middleweight fighting as a heavyweight who got there on food instead of weightlifting and SNAC.
Anyway, Romania’s Nistor improves to 2-0 (2 KO) as a pro. The 29-year-old knocked out Anthony Joshua in the amateurs like a decade ago, which we’ll have to mention to fill space until he does anything interesting. Solorio was down twice, but weird as it may sound, he really did try here, he was just hopelessly overmatched against an actual heavyweight who punches like a heavyweight. The end came at 2:24 when the referee rightly just called a halt to the farce. Yes, you get your win, but there’s no point to this otherwise.