Emanuel Navarrete unified a pair of super featherweight titles with his best performance in years, dominating Eduardo “Sugar” Nunez en route to an 11th round TKO victory.
Navarrete (40-2-1, 31 KO) forced the doctor to recommend stoppage just after the opening bell of the penultimate round. Nunez (29-2, 27 KO) had a badly damaged right eye that had hampered his vision enough after nine rounds to stop the fight, but was made worse in the 10th by another consistent attack from “Vaquero.”
Navarrete’s win sees him retain the WBO super featherweight title, and take the IBF title from Nunez.
The 31-year-old Navarrete came in with some questions about his recent form, following a controversial no-contest last May against Charly Suarez. But Navarrete was in fantastic form in this fight, and his years of experience as a top-level fighter played a key role as he battered the extremely game warrior Nunez, 28, who lost the title in his second defense, in what was by far the biggest fight of his career.
As long as Nunez’s eye is able to heal, boxing fans should look forward to seeing him fight again. He never gave up on this fight, even well behind on any reasonable score card and taking a battering at the heavy hands of Navarrete, and his spirit and determination should be commended greatly.
For Navarrete, it was not just a return to form but arguably as good as we’ve ever seen him, perhaps better than we’ve ever seen him in some ways. A good bit was made of his finally hiring a nutritionist, after his conditioning had been criticized some in recent outings, and it would be easy to guess that really made a significant impact on his performance tonight, because he was outstanding.
What did you make of Navarrete’s performance tonight?
