Emiliano Vargas’ KO win elevates Prospect of the Year candidacy

GLENDALE, Arizona – Emiliano Vargas’ candidacy for Prospect of the Year gained a sharp boost Friday in the complete, varied showing he produced in knocking out Ireland’s Larry Fryers in the fifth round.

Vargas (12-0, 10 KOs) flashed skill not expected from a 20-year-old, including a big, stinging right hand, speedy punching delivery in both hands and relentless attention to the body and head.

“I was having success with the body shots,” he said. “I had to mix it up. I want to finish guys, but you can’t just go for it.”

An effective left uppercut helped bloody Fryers’ nose by the third round, and Vargas’ body punching set up combinations to the head that drained Fryers’ aggression and widened the scoring disparity.

Fryers began to bleed under the left eye in the fourth thanks to the ongoing barrage. If Vargas is still developing his knockout power, he has compensated with a varied attack and activity, which left Fryers pained by the body blows.

In the fifth, the knockout arrived from a right and left to the body followed by a punishing left hand to the side of the head that caused the referee to quickly wave the bout over.

“Those Irish guys are like Mexicans,” Vargas said. “They come with everything.”

The son of former champion Fernando Vargas, Emiliano Vargas said the night was nearly a complete success because he fought how he strives to.

“Never boring,” Vargas said. “What an amazing feeling to come out this early in my career and have this kind of night.”

Vargas did hurt his right hand because of all the landed punches.

“Gotta do what you gotta do to win. I’m a fighter,” he said. “Getting the experience … I’ve got to go through this test. There’s no book, no how-to video. You’ve got to go in and do it, get hit with a couple shots and experience things. This was one of my best fights, action-packed. I’m very excited.”

Following a stunning earlier undercard knockout of Top Rank prospect Alan Garcia by Spanish journeyman Ricardo Fernandez, the junior lightweight knockout victory that followed by the Philippines’ Charly Suarez over Texas’ Jorge Castaneda was anticlimactic.

Suarez (18-0, 10 KOs) knocked down Castaneda (17-4) earlier in the third round before finishing him with another potent right hand at the 2:22 mark of the third.     

Junior lightweight DJ Zamora of Las Vegas showed why he’s tagged with the moniker “The War Machine,” artfully setting up repeated discouraging left hands thrown from the southpaw stance to defeat Gerardo Antonio Perez by unanimous decision scores of 80-72, 80-72, 79-73.

Argentina’s Perez (12-6-1) opened the third round with aggression that Zamora (14-0) weathered, returning to his effective pose. The success Perez experienced encouraged him to maintain his pressure, and he landed a head-jarring uppercut in the fourth.

But Zamora was more attentive to defense, defusing the impact of the slugfest Perez openly accepted. Zamora’s combinations to close the eighth were defining, and the pair embraced following the fun eight rounds, each raising an arm to the thankful crowd.

Junior bantamweight Steven Navarro of Los Angeles battered Oscar Arroyo with a merciless combination of head shots to induce a third-round technical knockout stoppage 2 minutes, 35 seconds into the round.

The 20-year-old Navarro (4-0, 2 KOs) first landed rapid-handed head shots to knock down Arroyo in the first half of the first round, then wobbled him again with power punches from the left-handed stance.

A combination capped by a right hand and power left to the top of the head dropped Virginia’s Arroyo (3-3) again near the close of the second.

Mexico’s Jorge Garcia Perez (31-4, 26 KOs) needed only 46 seconds to finish Germany’s Ilias Essaoudi (22-3), smashing him in the left side with a right hand. As Essaoudi grimaced in pain, Perez added two hard head shots to trigger the stoppage in the super middleweight bout.

Perez and a cornerman both said they believed Essaoudi broke a rib.

Tijuana’s Sebastian Hernandez (17-0, 16 KOs) punished Venezuela’s Yonfrez Parejo (24-7-1) through four rounds, forcing Parejo’s corner to stop the junior featherweight fight after four rounds.

Lance Pugmire is BoxingScene’s senior U.S. writer and an assistant producer for ProBox TV. Pugmire has covered boxing since the early 2000s, first at the Los Angeles Times and then at The Athletic and USA Today. He won the Boxing Writers’ Association of America’s Nat Fleischer Award in 2022 for career excellence.