Brandon Figueroa stopped Jessie Magdaleno in nine rounds in Las Vegas to remain on course to challenge Rey Vargas for the WBC featherweight title.
At the T-Mobile Arena, on the undercard of the undisputed super middleweight title fight between Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Jaime Munguia, Figueroa was increasingly succeeding with the pressure he was applying to Magdaleno when he dropped him with a powerful left hand to the body.
The stoppage that came with a second in the round remaining immediately seemed inevitable given both how heavily Magdaleno went down and his inability to find the energy to respond.
Magdaleno, 32, having weighed in at 128.6 pounds – 2.6 above the featherweight limit – had made himself ineligible to win Figueroa’s lightly regarded WBC interim title, but his size advantage had until then made him difficult to break down.
In the third, he swung and fell short with a wild right hand that captured the ambition he demonstrated throughout the opening rounds – to tie up the aggressive Figueroa, to absorb his pressure and potentially to eventually respond.
When Magdaleno landed a left uppercut in the fourth, he provided a reminder of the fighter he had often been until getting stopped by Isaac Dogboe in 2018. But towards the round’s conclusion, he was put down, and stayed down for some time, following a low blow.
If the 27-year-old Figueroa – who weighed 125.4 pounds – is typically sufficiently fluid on his feet to effectively close down the ring, Magdaleno was proving equally good on his to, in combination with tying Figueroa up, largely remain out of harm’s way.
A period of pressure by the ropes in the sixth demonstrated that Figueroa’s approach was starting to succeed, but in the eighth he was punished for his aggression via a right to his body and then a strong left hand.
Again Magdaleno, who recorded his second successive defeat, struggled against Figueroa’s pressure at the start of the ninth. By its conclusion, when Figueroa followed a right to the head with a left to the body, that pressure had ultimately told.
Mexico’s Mario Barrios then retained his WBC interim welterweight title, via unanimous decision, over Fabian Andres Maidana.
Barrios resisted significant swelling under his right eye to earn three deserved scores of 116-111 at the conclusion of 12 largely one-sided rounds, having dropped Maidana – the Argentinian, 31, is the younger brother of Marcos – in the third with a clean right hand.
The expectation that Terence Crawford, the WBC, WBA and WBO champion who is fighting WBA junior middleweight champion Israil Madrimov on Aug. 3, will vacate his welterweight titles means that Barrios, 28, is expected to be elevated to the status of champion.
