The welterweight Emiliano Moreno’s seventh-round stoppage of Cesar Francis on Wednesday may have been the biggest of his career, but it also came with some controversy that somewhat marred the show.
Their bout served as the co-feature of a ProBox TV telecast from Chicken Ranch Casino Resort in Jamestown, California.
Moreno, 19 and who started the fight slowly, believes the referee Dan Stell’s stoppage was good.
“I felt good – I was just checking him out the first couple of rounds,” he told BoxingScene. “Even though I gave him a few rounds, I felt I was in control the whole time and I could turn it up whenever I wanted to, and that’s what I did. I got him out of there.”
Francis, 34, of west New York, New Jersey, boxed masterfully in the first part of the fight. Moreno, of Long Beach, California, began to have success by coming forwards and landing body shots in the fifth round.
“I saw him taking a lot of hard shots that round,” said Moreno, 12-0 (7 KOs). “If I hit him with one shot and he stumbled, that would have been weird, but he was taking hard shots the whole round.”
Francis, now 13-3 (8 KOs), has been stopped in two of his past three fights. Moreno believes that inside the ring the referee saw his intentions, despite the stoppage appearing bizarre to many viewers outside of the ropes.
“When I stumbled him, I went for the kill and the ref already knew what time it was,” Moreno said. “He was either going to stop the fight or [Francis] was going to get hurt.”
Moreno said that even if the fight hadn’t been stopped by Stell at the time, he would have finished Francis at some point.
“If he had went down and took a little eight-count, I would have taken him out that same round,” Moreno said. “It doesn’t matter.”
Lucas Ketelle is the author of “Inside the Ropes of Boxing”, a guide for young fighters, a writer for BoxingScene and a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. Find him on X at @LukieBoxing.
