Soto puts Gaudet down -- and out

LAS VEGAS —  Humberto Soto of Tijuana knocked out Canadian Benoit Gaudet with less than a minute left in the ninth round Saturday to retain his World Boxing Council super-featherweight title in the featured event of a 10-fight undercard preceding the Ricky Hatton-Manny Pacquiao fight at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.

Soto (48-7-2) knocked Gaudet (20-2) down less than a minute into the fight and nearly put him on the canvas again in the fourth round. By the ninth round of the scheduled 12-round bout, Gaudet, whose most effective shots came late in the seventh round when he hurt Soto with a pair of punches that were clearly below the belt, was running out of stream. Soto sent him back down with a combination in the corner. Though a jelly-legged Gaudet managed to get up, the next time Soto connected he went down again and the fight was stopped.

The most impressive win of the night went to hard-punching middleweight Matt Korobov, a former world champion and a 2008 Olympian from Russia, who knocked out Anthony Bartenelli’s mouthpiece in the first round and then knocked out Bartenelli himself with 45 seconds left in the second, running his pro record to 5-0 with five knockouts. The fight was so one-sided, Korobov landed 65 punches while Bartenelli (15-13-2) of Phoenix connected on only three.

In a fast-paced welterweight bout, 27-year-old Matthew Hatton (36-4-1), who often appears on the undercards of older brother Ricky’s major bouts, pounded out an eight-round unanimous decision over Mexico’s Ernesto Zepeda (39-12-4).

Abner Mares, a former Mexican Olympian now fighting out of Montebello, ran his record to 18-0 when Colombian Jonathan Perez (14-6) refused to leave his corner for the seventh round of their eight-round bantamweight matchup. Left-hander Erislandy Lara, a former world amateur champion who defected from Cuba last year, won his fifth consecutive pro fight with a unanimous decision over junior middleweight Chris Gray (11-8) of Baton Rouge, La.

In the first two bouts of the day, junior welterweight Omar Chavez, the youngest son of former Mexican champion Julio Cesar Chavez, ran his record to 15-0-1 with a second-round knockout of Tyler Ziolowski (11-7) of St. Joseph, Mo., and former British Olympian Joe Murray (2-0) won a unanimous decision over Los Angeles’ Missael Nunez (4-8-2) in a four-round featherweight fight.

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