After it seemed like Yamaguchi Falcao would get revenge on Christopher Pearson for losing to him in the amateurs, Pearson mounted a furious rally to emerge victorious against the Brazilian middleweight once again.
In the main event of a Golden Boy Promotions card in Las Vegas that was streamed on Facebook, Pearson scored a unanimous decision win over Falcao to win the WBC Latino middleweight title. Pearson won with scores of 97-93, 96-94 and 96-94. The fight is a rematch from their 2011 bout during the World Series of Boxing in which Pearson took home the victory.
Falcao dominated the first half of the fight, unleashing a number of combinations that pressured Pearson to the ropes. Pearson shrugged off most of Falcao's punches with a smile, but had failed to do anything to counter Falcao's offense. That is until the second half of the fight started and Pearson slowly threw more punches and gained confidence doing so.
Pearson would eventually wear down Falcao and broke through with his own combinations, some of which hurt Falcao and left him bleeding from his nose. The final two rounds saw Pearson nearly drop Falcao as the Brazilian would hang on to dear life and defend against Pearson's power punches. Pearson's second-half rally was enough to get him the win on the scorecards.
In the co-main event bout, Canadian Steven Butler picked up the WBC International middleweight title after a tough, split decision win over Vitalii Kopylenko (96-93, 94-95, 96-93). Butler had started to take a minor lead in the scorecards in the first half of the fight, but ran into some trouble in the eighth round of the fight. Early in the eighth round, Butler was hurt by a left body shot from Kopylenko and then dropped to one knee seconds later from another body shot.
There was another title fight on the undercard, this one for the NABA and NABO super middleweight titles. Erik Bazinyan dominated Alan Campa throughout the 10 rounds, winning the fight by unanimous decision (99-90, 99-90, 97-92).
Opening the Facebook portion of the card was a fight between Alexis Salazar and Abraham Cordero. Like Bazinyan, Salazar cruised to an easy and wide unanimous decision win over Cordero, winning with scores of 80-72, 80-72, 79-73. On the untelevised portion of the card, Richard Acevedo knocked Mario Sosa out in the first round of their fight.
