Martinez dominates to win title from Chavez Jr

Skooter reporting 09/17/12

Bleeding from the nose and his face bruised from the hands of Martinez, Chavez one way or another found a way to land a left hook and then another that sent Martinez on the canvas before a turbulent capacity crowd at the UNLV campus arena. In the final round, Martinez would have go down one more time and was taking massive punches when the bell fortunately sounded to end the fight.

Martinez ended up winning a lopsided unanimous decision to regain the middleweight title. The12th-round rally by Chavez was one for boxing tradition, evocative of a fight his father was in 22 years ago against Meldrick Taylor just a few miles away from the Las Vegas Strip.

For 11 rounds, Martinez was quicker, busier and more accurate as he won round after round, building up points as Chavez fought back against Martinez.

Before the fight Martinez said he didn’t consider Chavez a real champion and vowed to give him a beating he would long remember and he did just that.

Chavez said he was 20 seconds away from knocking him out. He said he started way too late. He didn't really get started until the eighth round.

On two ringside score cards, Martinez won 118-110 and 117-110 on the third. Two judges had him winning every round until the 12th, while the third gave him only one round. The Associated Press had Martinez winning 118-110.

Chavez lost for the first time, falling to 46-1-1, while Martinez improved to 50-2-2.

Chavez earned $3 million guaranteed, his biggest while Martinez got $1.4 million plus a percentage of the pay-per-view sales.

AP