About a half-hour before the start of the weigh-in for last Saturday’s boxing card in San Diego, Eumir Marcial was asked if he’d be willing to step in for WBC interim middleweight champion Jesus Ramos who pulled out of the co-main event against Meirim Nursultanov the night before. Ramos called in sick and was hospitalized for apparent food poisoning.
Marcial’s bout against Omar Huerta wasn’t on the list of four fights to be televised by DZAN but with Ramos out, the promoter Premier Boxing Champions (PBC) had a gap to fill. The initial idea was to bring in Marcial to replace Ramos but DAZN eventually decided to bump up the two-time Olympian’s match against Huerta to open the TV broadcast.
“When Ramos went out, they asked Eumir at 8:30 in the morning, a half-hour before the weigh-in, if he would step in for that spot and fight for the No. 1 position in the WBC,” related Marcial’s main man and MP Promotions president Sean Gibbons. “Eumir’s answer was where do I sign? (PBC primary promoter) Tom Brown, who’s an old-school guy with 40 years of experience, had new-found respect for Eumir. That’s OG saying I’ll step up and jump in. Tom and (PBC founder) Al Heymon were thrilled that Eumir was ready to fight. DAZN then decided to elevate the Blancas-Jimenez fight as the replacement co-feature and left Eumir to open the TV card. Eumir was sensational and stole the show.”
The unbeaten Marcial knocked out Huerta at 1:08 of the third frame in a scheduled eight-rounder. A counter overhand right hook to the head sent Huerta flat on his back and referee Tom Taylor made the full count. Marcial landed 54 overall punches to Huerta’s 27 and 22 of his connections were body shots. Of the 54 blows, 38 were power bombs. Two of the three judges scored the second round for Huerta despite Marcial dominating the exchanges, landing 26 punches to his opponent’s 13. Entering the third, two judges Jose Cobian and Fernando Villarreal saw it 19-all and judge Rogelio Chapa had Marcial on top, 20-18.
“Eumir looked great although he got hit a few times but Huerta was a tall and rangy guy,” said Gibbons. “Being out of the ring for nine months, he still needs to work out a few things like moving his head to slip punches but he did exactly what he needed to do. In a perfect world, he’ll be back in December but it’ll probably be in the first part of January. Everybody is absolutely thrilled, excited and fired up. One of the things PBC loved was when the co-feature fell out, Eumir volunteered to step in and fight the guy for the WBC No. 1 spot so everybody’s high on Eumir right now and we’ll keep going forward.”
Marcial left Los Angeles last Monday night and is headed straight to Zamboanga. Gibbons said he expects Marcial back in Las Vegas to resume training in two or three weeks. Marcial opted out of the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games because of time constraints. There wouldn’t be enough time to acclimatize with his first fight scheduled today and besides, he wouldn’t have made the deadline for the mandatory pre-Asian Games testing.