Bantamweight Alexandro Santiago stopped fellow-former world title challenger Antonio Nieves when the pair squared off the rematch at Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, AZ on Saturday, October 29. The contested was featured on the PPV card headlined by Jake Paul vs Anderson Silva.
In Australia the event aired live on Sunday, October 30.
Their first fight in 2016 ended in a split draw. Santiago was on top in their second encounter taking the victory via RTD after Nieves’ corner refused to let him come out for the eighth round of their scheduled for ten rounds matchup.
Santiago was ahead on the judges’ scorecards by three scores of 68-65 at the time of the stoppage. Santiago landed 49% of his power punches, and 40 more power punches than Nieves of Cleveland, Ohio, according to CompuBox. Mexico’s Santiago called this the biggest win of his career and blamed nerves on the split draw in 2016 when he took the fight on short notice and was moving up in weight.
“In our first fight against each other, it was my big debut in the United States, so it was a different fight than what you saw tonight,” said Santiago, who improved to 27-3-5 with 14 KOs as Nieves dropped to 20-4-2. “I envisioned that it was going to end this way. I didn’t want it to go to the judges. I’m going to be even better trained for my next fight. I want to become the champion of the world, so I want to fight the best. The best that are out there in my division, I want to fight them.”
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