Brick City Boxing

Local “Rising Stars” Dominate the Undercard
By: Danny Serratelli, ringside

Last Night Pound for Pound Productions made their promotional debut in New Jersey with “The Night of the Rising Stars”. The show featured five bouts from the Park Theater in Union City which provided the opportunity for several local fighters to showcase their talent to the fans. In the main event, Paterson New Jersey’s Henry Crawford, 18-0-1, 8 KO’s dominated Knoxville Tennessee’s Thomas Davis, 12-7-2, 7 KO’s over 8 rounds. Davis showed heart and even taunted Crawford early, but absorbed a tremendous amount of punches over the 8 round distance. In the end the ringside judges scored the welterweight bout a sweep on 2 cards with the 3rd judge finding a round to give Davis for his efforts (Julie Lederman 80-71, John Poturaj 80-72 and Eugene Grant 79-71).

[More:]

Crawford showed discipline in the fight. While he opened up at times, he was still careful not to get sloppy against the game veteran who stopped Kendall Holt almost 4 years ago. Davis has been stopped a couple of times before, but always comes to fight and has been in with many good fighters. Crawford, who is trained by a solid young trainer in Nettles Nassar, is ready to step up his opposition to the next level at this point after thoroughly dominating game veteran fighters in several of his recent fights.

Junior middleweight, Roney Vargas, 5-0, 4 KO’s stopped William Armstead, 2-5, 1 KO in the 1st round. Armstead was outmatched from the outset and attempted too rush Vargas and try to get lucky with a big punch, but he turned his back on his opponent a couple times before the stoppage that came at :58 of the 1st round.

Bantamweight, Jorge Diaz, 3-0, 3 KO’s stopped Arthur Parker 1-6, 1 KO when referee Randy Neumann halted the contest at 2:33 of the 2nd round after he was dropped twice in the opening round. Diaz was impressive in the knockout of Parker who had lasted the distance in all of his previous bouts.

Jeremy Bryan, 3-0, 1 KO, who was a good amateur, scored his 1st knockout as a professional when he stopped game New Jersey veteran Adam Salas, 10-11, 2 KO’s at 2:19 of round number 3. Salas was visibly upset when his corner threw the towel stopping the fight at 2:19 of round number 3. Salas who used to be pretty slick, but had not fought in over 4 years looked like he was waiting for the young Bryan to punch himself out, but Bryan looked fundamentally sound and in good shape and it wasn’t to be. Salas had only been stopped once before in his career and that came at the hands of former light welterweight champion Vivian Harris.

The most crowd support of the evening probably went to light heavyweight, Jason Escalara, 1-0, 1 KO a Union City fighter who’s trains a few blocks away from the venue. Escalara stopped Jeff Goss, 0-1 early in round number 1 and did not let him off the hook. Referee, Eddie Cotton called a halt to the bout at 1:43 of the 1st after Escalara floored him 3 times.