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Antonio Orozco stops KeAndre Gibson in fourth round

Antonio Orozco's poses with manager Frank Espinoza (right) after defeating KeAndre Gibson for a minor title in April 2017.
Fighters Network
01
Apr

Junior welterweight contender Antonio Orozco remained unbeaten with a fourth-round stoppage of talented prospect KeAndre Gibson in the main event of a “Golden Boy on ESPN” show on Saturday at The Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas.

Orozco (26-0, 17 knockouts), a 29-year-old San Diego-based pressure fighter, caught Gibson with a right hand to the left temple midway through Round 4. Gibson (16-1-1, 7 KOs) froze and suffered a delayed knockdown. Though he beat Russell Mora’s 10 Count, the 27-year-old St. Louis native stumbled to a neutral corner and did not answer the referee’s questions (mainly “Do you want to continue?”). Mora waved the contest off without any protest from Gibson or the fighter’s corner at 1:31 of the round.

It was a rather abrupt and somewhat disappointing ending to what promised to be an interesting matchup on paper, and it was a compelling style mesh for three rounds. Gibson, the taller, rangier and quicker of the two, had his moments while utilizing a controlled stick-and-move strategy, but Orozco, THE RING’s No. 2-rated junior welterweight, applied hard pressure and landed the harder punches during the competitive first nine minutes of the bout.

Prior to the fight-ending right cross, Orozco’s most effective punches were body shots. He used a two-fisted body attack to slow Gibson down and eventually set up the knock-down shot.



Orozco, should he decide to remain at 140 pounds (he wasn’t able to make the junior welterweight limit in his previous scheduled bout last December), could be in line for a WBC title-elimination bout against one of that sanctioning organization’s top-rated contenders, Amir Imam.

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