By Rick Reeno & Keith Idec

T-Mobile Arena, Las Vegas - Dangerous punching middleweight Curtis Stevens (29-5, 21KOs) won a ten round unanimous decision over James De La Rosa (23-5, 13KOs) to retain the WBC Continental Americas championship. The scores were 96-92, 96-92, 98-90.

Stevens came out in the first round, as expected, firing calculated big shots. The first punch that landed forced De La Rosa to hold on strong. De La Rosa was jabbing and attempting to catch Stevens with a counter as he was coming in.

Stevens was using a lot of head movement and staying patient as he walked De La Rosa down and dropped him against the ropes in the final twenty seconds. Once back up on his feet, De La Rosa swung away to keep Stevens off of him and survived to the second round.

De La Rosa's left eye was in real bad shape when he came out for the second. Stevens went right back to work, stalking him down and looking to connect with hard combinations. De La Rosa already appeared to be in full survival mode until the final minute, because Stevens took his foot off the gas and De La Rosa was sticking and moving.

Stevens was beating down De La Rosa at the start of the third as he trapped him in the corner and let his power punches fly. De La Rosa showed heart by deciding to stand there and exchange instead of hold. He was able to catch Stevens with several hard shots, but none of them had any real effect.

The pace slowed down a little in the fourth. Stevens was allowing De La Rosa to lead while looking for hard counters in return. The same tempo continued in the fifth and sixth, with neither fighter doing much of anything.

Stevens was getting more active with his punches in the seventh and eight, while De La Rosa was either jabbing of staying defensive. During the eight, Stevens lost a point for repeated low blows. Stevens more or less controlled the final two rounds with De La Rosa not doing much of anything outside of clowning around and taunting.