Salita and Collazo Shine in Brooklyn!

Dmitriy “Star of David” Salita notched his third consecutive victory Wednesday evening by earning a workmanlike eight round unanimous decision over offensively inefficient Ronnie Warrior Jr. at the Oceana Club in his hometown of Brooklyn, NY.

With a standing room only crowd cheering him on, Salita took the fight to Warrior from the opening bell, but tumbled to the canvas shortly thereafter following a clash of heads. Those on hand would soon learn that Warrior’s surname gave no indication of the way he fought.

While Salita spent much of the bout ripping body and head shots in close quarters, Warrior struggled to move his hands and relied on dirty tactics. On multiple occasions, the Oklahoma City, OK native led with his head, held and forced his elbow into Salita’s neck during clinches.

Rather than let his counterpart’s dirty tactics take him off his game plan, Salita continued to dominate the action until the completion of the 8th and final round of the welterweight contest.

Scores were 80-72 twice and 79-73.

Salita, whose only defeat came via first round TKO against Amir Khan in a world title bout, improves 33-1-1 with 17 KO’s. Warrior falls to 13-5-1 (4 KO’s) after the disappointing effort.

In his first fight in nearly two years, Luis Collazo (30-4, 15 KO’s, 149lbs) made his return to boxing (and New York City) against Franklin Gonzalez (13-8, 10 KO’s, 151lbs). Despite the disparity in wins, Gonzalez was expected to be crafty enough to show how much rust Collazo had built up during his layoff, and he had enough pop in his punches to show whether or not Collazo was capable of handling the punches at the junior middleweight weight class.

After a boisterous entrance, Collazo went right to work. Both fighters were left handed, so Collazo skipped right past the feeling out process and tried going right into Gonzalez’ chest. Despite not being known as a big puncher, Collazo’s strengths lie in his in-fighting. By the second round, Gonzalez was no match for Collazo. A short left followed by a right dropped Gonzalez just a few seconds before the bell to end the round had sounded. As the third round started, Collazo did not want to take too many risks, so he just went right back to the game plan that was already working.

Collazo landed a sharp combination consisting of a straight left, right hook, right body shot that seemed to hurt Gonzalez. Collazo followed up with a left uppercut, which sent Gonzalez down. After beating the count, Gonzalez was immediately met with another uppercut, and the referee was forced to stop the fight at the 2:14 mark, giving Collazo a TKO victory in the third round.

Although Philadelphia junior middleweight Greg “Hot Shot” Hackett’s professional ledger doesn’t coincide with his moniker, he’s without question tougher than a two dollar steak; or shall we say Philly Cheesesteak. Hackett, 2-8, dropped a hard fought unanimous decision to Mike Ruiz of Long Island, NY where he made the hometown favorite work throughout the six round contest.

Ruiz, 12-4 (6 KO’s), was the busier fighter, landed the cleaner punches and scored a knockdown in the final round with a straight right hand, but Hackett was consistently applying pressure throughout the bout. Hackett connected with a few solid shots that garnered a reaction from the crowd, although he wasn’t consistent enough to make a case for a victory.

Scores were 60-53, 59-54 and 58-55.

Wildly popular Brooklynite Rafael Vazquez scored an emotional third round TKO over Puerto Rico’s Juan Melendez. With autism awareness serving as a focal point of the card, Vazquez proudly sported trunks that read “I love a child with autism”. It was clear that he was out to make a splash to honor his child while pleasing his fans; and that’s exactly what he did. Vazquez was the busier fighter during the first two rounds, where he displayed solid body work.

In the third, Vazquez dominated Melendez and a hard combination sent the latter tumbling into the ropes, which prompted Referee Benjiy Esteves to rule it a knockdown. Before Vazquez could continue his assault, Mendez’ corner elected to end the junior lightweight contest by throwing in the towel.

Time of stoppage was 1:48.

Vazquez improves to 6-0 with 4 knockouts. Melendez slips to 2-5-1.

The first fight of the evening saw Hamid Abdul-Mateen (1-1, 180lbs) in the ring against a man with one name; Bakari (0-1). The bout was a sloppy affair. Abdul-Mateen was the more talented of the two and used his athleticism to gain advantage over Bakari. Bakari did not show much offensive arsenal.

He would go into a shell any time Abdul-Mateen threw a flurry, and after the fracas was over with, he would attempt a wild hook. Abdul-Mateen threw mostly flurries to the body, as Bakari’s defensive shell was difficult to work around. In the end, Abdul-Mateen walked away with a unanimous decision victory with all three judges scoring the bout 40-36 in his favor.

Arben Paloka contributed to this report by covering the Collazo-Gonzalez and Abdul-Mateen-Bakari bouts.