BOXING
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Brian Viloria, left, saw his bid to win the vacant WBC light flyweight title go up in smoke after the Waipahu native lost a 12-round majority decision yesterday to Edgar Sosa at San Antonio. The loss was only the second for Viloria in 21 bouts; Sosa improved to 27-5.
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Sosa defeats Viloria for WBC title
Boxer from Waipahu says he may move up to 112 for next bout
By Mike Finger
Special to the Star-Bulletin
SAN ANTONIO » Midway through last night's WBC light flyweight championship bout at the Alamodome, Brian Viloria had an odd reaction to being cornered by Edgar Sosa.
He smiled.
"I was enjoying myself," Viloria said. "It kind of tickled me to see how he was fighting. I thought I could easily box him."
Unfortunately for the Waipahu-bred Viloria, his good mood didn't last long. Sosa emerged from an early slumber to dominate the second half of the fight, and won the championship belt with a 12-round majority decision.
Judges Max De Luca and Jesse Reyes scored the bout 115-113 in favor of Sosa, and Burt Clements scored it a draw.
Viloria (19-2) was already upset that his last shot at a title was foiled when last November's fight against Omar Nino finished in a controversial majority draw. He said he thought he deserved to win yesterday's bout, too.
"I thought I won the fight," Viloria said. "(Sosa) wasn't really doing much. I was just catching more of the obvious punches."
But in the end, Sosa's strong finish was too much for the judges to overlook. Sosa (27-5), a Mexico City native, landed 233 punches compared to Viloria's 155. Sosa also had a big edge in power punches connected, landing 162 to Viloria's 107.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Brian Viloria, right, landed 78 fewer punches than Edgar Sosa did during last night's fight.
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And if there was any doubt about the outcome of the fight, the 12th and final round removed it. Sosa began that round as the aggressor, and with a pro-Mexico crowd of 14,793 getting more and more raucous, he pummeled Viloria with a furious late flurry.
"I felt real strong, and that revived me a little," Sosa said in Spanish of the crowd support. "I could have (knocked him out)."
Early in the fight, it was clear Viloria's plan was to be patient, and that seemed to bother Sosa. He had difficulty getting into a rhythm, and Viloria took advantage of it.
After five rounds, Viloria had the lead on all three of the judges' scorecards, and two of those judges had him winning four of the first five rounds.
But the fight took a big turn in the sixth, when a cut under Sosa's right eye began to open and apparently angered him enough to start landing punches. In the ninth, Sosa attacked Viloria with a brutal combination in the corner of the ring, causing Viloria's knees to buckle.
Viloria never sniffed the momentum after that.
"At first I felt a little frustrated," Sosa said. "But then I started picking him apart, because he was doing the same thing over and over."
Last night's fight just added to what has been a rough few months for Viloria.
The championship was vacated because Omar Nino, the previous title-holder who fought Viloria to a draw in Las Vegas, failed a drug test. That caused November's Nino-Viloria bout, which Viloria and his team still argue he should have won, to be declared a no-contest.
Now that he's dealing with another disappointment, the 26-year-old Viloria said he and his manager will regroup before deciding who to fight next. He said one possibility is moving into the 112-pound weight class.
"I'll seriously look to move up," Viloria said. "I don't think my size fits the 108 (-pound) division."