Highlights and results: Ashton Sylve goes the distance for first time, stays unbeaten

Lightweight prospect Ashton Sylve went the distance for the first time as a pro, improving to 9-0 (8 KO) with an eight-round sweep over late notice opponent Adam Kipenga tonight, in the main event of the first “Most Valuable Prospects” show on DAZN.

The 19-year-old Sylve won on clear and deserved scores of 80-72 from all three judges, but got some valuable experience in this one.

The southpaw Kipenga (11-4-1, 7 KO) got the call just this week to step in as a late notice sub, and the 24-year-old from Tanzania gave Sylve some good looks, provided an opponent that wasn’t easily bowled over, and made the young man work for eight.

“We gotta go back home and sharpen a lot of things up,” Sylve said. “He’s got a hard-ass head and he’s very defensive, very, very defensive.”

The series will return on Friday, Aug. 18, with 29-year-old Nestor Bravo (21-0, 15 KO) already announced for the main event fight, again at the Caribe Royale in Orlando. The show’s two other dates this year will be Oct. 27 and Dec. 15, also Friday nights.

• Kevin Hayler Brown UD-10 Julian Smith: Brown’s 29, Smith is 32, this was not a matchup of “prospects.” But! It was a pretty entertaining, well-matched fight. The commentary were totally in the bag for Brown (3-0, 2 KO), but two of the judges came back with 96-94 cards for him, which I thought were totally fair. The other was 98-92 which I felt was wide. Smith (6-2, 4 KO) gave this a real go and landed plenty of good shots. I thought he had a better argument for a draw than Brown did for an 8-2 card.

• Lorenzo Medina UD-6 Angel Napoles: There is a stereotype and idea of what a “Cuban boxer” is. Angel Napoles is a man who is from Cuba and is a boxer, but he is not a Cuban boxer. He took this on very short notice and all, but there’s not much there for someone who’s listed at 26 years old. He’s now 1-1 (1 KO), while Medina, 18, improves to 7-0 (6 KO), going the distance for the first round as a young heavyweight. Medina has some promise, showed some maturity, but yes, he’s 18, and he’s not a big heavyweight or anything, but he looks to thick in the shoulders and arms to drop 30 lbs and capably fight at cruiserweight, so you can probably count that out. What he can do is covert the baby fat — I’m really not being mean here, he’s 18 years old, it’s normal — into more lean muscle and the like, but he has a long time, so we’ll see.

• Bryce Henry UD-4 Jamar Pemberton: Henry is now 6-0 (4 KO), getting unanimous scores of 38-37 with a first round knockdown, so it would have been even without that. Pemberton (4-1, 4 KO) was positioned as the A-side here and Henry came in on a week’s notice. In all honesty, neither of them exactly looked like future world title contenders yet, but the fight was pretty well-matched and all that.