Rafael Espinoza is still the WBO featherweight champion, and Ricardo Blandon is still looking for the fight he came to Riyadh to have. The ringside physician waved off Blandon’s challenge at 1:22 of Round 3 on Saturday after a bad cut. Officially it goes down as a TKO by cut stoppage, according to MMA Fighting’s live results from Kingdom Arena.
MiddleEasy reported that the end came during a third-round medical inspection. The doctor took a look at the damage and decided Blandon was done. Turki Alalshikh posted the result on X shortly after, calling Espinoza a Mexican boxer who defeated Blandon and retained his WBO world featherweight title.
Espinoza came in at 28-0 with 24 knockouts, per MMA Mania’s card preview, so he leaves Riyadh at 29-0. He’s a strange-looking featherweight, and I mean that as a compliment. He’s tall for 126 pounds with a reach to match, and he fights like a pressure guy with a lot of volume behind a long jab. He weighed 125.8 pounds on Friday. Blandon made the 126-pound limit on the nose.
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Blandon arrived at 21-6 with 14 knockouts, which means he can hit hard enough to earn some respect. He was also a replacement opponent facing a world champion, and that gap in experience was the whole story of the matchup going in. MMA Mania flagged his level of competition as the big problem. A cut in the third round meant we never found out whether his power could make up for it.
The fight was one of three title bouts on the Canelo Alvarez vs. Christian Mbilli card, a DAZN pay-per-view that started early Saturday. Canelo (63-3-2) faces the unbeaten Mbilli (29-0-1) for the WBC super middleweight title in the main event. Jaime Munguia defends his WBO super middleweight belt against Nikita Zon in the co-main.
The featherweight bout that might matter most to Espinoza happened earlier on the same card. Carl Jammes Martin, the Filipino puncher who came in 28-0, beat David Picasso (33-1-1) by split decision on scores of 94-95, 95-94 and 96-93. Both men weighed in right at the division limit. Martin’s camp now has a win over a guy who has shared a ring with Naoya Inoue, and they have a fresh reason to call out the champion who fought two slots later.
My take is that nobody should read much into a 1:22-of-Round-3 cut stoppage against a replacement, good or bad. Espinoza did what the setup asked of him. If you had Blandon in the late rounds or Blandon by decision, I’m sorry, and I’ll gladly add your ticket to the shoebox where I keep mine. The champion is 29-0, he’s healthy, and the most interesting featherweight in that building who doesn’t own a belt is an unbeaten Filipino puncher who just got the hardest win of his career. I’d make Espinoza vs. Martin next and charge admission for the weigh-in alone.
