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By: William Holmes
Golden Boy Promotions presented tonight’s installment of Golden Boy Live from the Cowboys Dance Hall in San Antonio Texas for a Monday night fight card. The main event featured a welterweight bout between Fidel Maldonado Jr. and John Nater as well as an undercard with two Olympians, Errol Spence and Terrell Gausha.
The first televised bout of the night was a scheduled eight round middleweight bout between Terrell Gausha (7-0) and George Sosa (13-5). Sosa took the fight on short notice, but he did come to fight. In the first round Sosa took the middle of the ring while Gausha circled around on the outside. Gausha mixed up his combinations to the head and body of Sosa while Sosa had trouble getting past his high guard. This was a pattern that repeated itself throughout the bout.
Gausha had a comfortable first round and he had his jab firmly established by the second round. Sosa’s nose was bloody from Gausha’s constant jab in his face and was rocked by a left hook in the second. Sosa looked exhausted by the third round, and by the fourth round it looked more like a sparring session than a competitive professional fight for the ex Olympian.
Sosa was likely saved from a possible knockdown in the fourth round when his gloves were inexplicably sliding off his hand after getting rocked by Gausha. Gausha came close to knocking Sosa down several times, especially in the last round when he was winging hard right punches at the head of Sosa, but he was never able to send the tough Sosa to the mat.
The final scores were 80-72, 80-72, and 79-73 for Terrell Gausha.
The next bout of the night was between fellow Olympian Errol Spence Jr. (10-0) and Peter Oluoch (12-6-2) in the welterweight division. Oluoch was twelve years older than the Olympic southpaw and was also maybe twelve times slower. Oluoch had only fought three times in the United States and was outmatched from the opening round on.
Spence punctuated the first round with a lightning quick body head combination that ended with a thudding right hook upstairs. His straight left crosses were landing by the second round and Spence was clearly cruising by the third round.
Spence scored his first knockdown on the night in the fourth round when he landed a crushing uppercut that forced Oluoch to try and hang on, but he consequentially fell to the mat. When he rose to his feet Spence came right at Oluoch with combinations and then knocked Oluoch to his back with a crisp straight left hand.
The referee waived off the bout at 1:39 of the fourth round.
The main event of the night was between Fidel Maldonado Jr. (17-2) and John Nater (13-4) in the welterweight division. The underdogs on the televised matches were severely outgunned but came to fight, the underdog in the main event however did not engage at all.
Nater’s victories have come over atrocious competition and he seems to always lose when he takes a step up in competition. Maldonado, a southpaw, spent most of the bout chasing Nater around the ring in an attempt to get him to engage.
By third round, Barry Tompkins stated on television, “ A lot of stalking going on here, but not much action.” The lack of action was not Maldonado’s fault, and he finally dropped Nater with a short left hand upstairs that was opened up with a body shot. Nater was able to get to his feet and survive the round, but was dropped by another body shot in the fourth round.
Nater’s corner rightly stopped the bout after the fourth round and gave Maldonado a fourth round TKO victory.
