- Last week the legendary Bernard Hopkins made his final walk to the ring on HBO. Hopkins took on Joe Smith in his farewell fight but things did not go as "The Executioner" had hoped. It used to be said that Father Time is undefeated with an asterisk next to Hopkins' name. Well Father Time finally caught up to Hopkins because he looked all of his 51 years on Saturday night. Smith started fast and was clearly looking to end things early. Hopkins was able to put in some decent work but his punches lacked any real pop. Meanwhile, Smith's punches looked serious and in the eighth round Smith caught Hopkins with a flurry of punches that clearly hurt him before sending him falling out of the ring. The fall left Hopkins unable to continue and he finished his career with a first, being knocked out. For Smith it was another big upset and should enable him to focus on boxing full-time and quit his construction job.
- Also in action on that HBO card was highly touted prospect Joseph Diaz. Diaz was looking to keep his perfect record intact and did just that by completely dominating Horacio Garcia over the course of 10 rounds. In fact when the official scores were announced all three judges scored all 10 rounds for Diaz. Opening HBO's card was a WBO world title fight from the cruiserweight division. In that fight the undefeated Oleksandr Usyk took on Thabiso Mchunu and he looked great. Usyk, who hopes to become a star in American is certainly on his way and he dropped Mchunu a total of three times and knocked him out in the ninth round.
- On Friday night the only fights in action took place on HBO Latino. That card was headlined by an intriguing fight between the undefeated Vyacheslav Shabranskyy and the one-loss Sullivan Barrera. Barrera was fresh off a one-sided loss to Andre Ward but he clearly learned some new tricks in that fight because he looked very good against Shabranskyy. Shabranskyy was down in the opening round but came back nicely to drop Barrera in the next round. However, from the third round on it was all Barrera. Barrera landed his straight right hand at will and he dropped Shabranskyy again in the fifth round and again in the seventh to win the fight with a seventh round knockout. Also on that card was a fight between Eddie Gomez and Rashidi Ellis that didn't last too long. In fact it didn't even last one full round because Ellis dropped Gomez twice in the first round, the second of which ended the bout.
- The last fight of the weekend took place on CBS Sports and featured a main event that pitted Oscar Cantu up against Aston Palicte. While the fight was close throughout it was the heavier punches of Palicte that were the real difference and he was able to beat Cantu by the way of split decision.
WEEKLY RECORD: 4-2
MONTHLY RECORD: 9-8
OVERALL RECORD: 811-231-33
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