Filipino Mark “Magnifico” Magsayo suffered his first professional loss and failed to defend his WBC featherweight title against undefeated Mexican Rey Vargas on Saturday night at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas.
Leading up to the July 9th fight, the champion Magsayo (24-1, 16 KOs) who is trained by Freddie Roach, spoke confidently that he would beat Vargas (36-0, 22 KOs) and called the former WBC super bantamweight champion a runner.
On fight night Vargas did anything but run, he stood his ground and went toe to toe with the Filipino slugger.
During the fight it remained very competitive, but the size difference showed with Magsayo who stands at 5 foot 6 inches tall had difficulty trying to close the gap and reach the 5 foot 10 inch Vargas.
Despite dropping Vargas in round nine, Magsayo was down on the cards due to the high workrate of Vargas.
Legendary boxing trainers Nacho Beristain and Freddie Roach were in the corners tonight, with Beristain working Vargas corner and Roach with Magsayo, the two have faced off several times mainly with historical bouts between Manny Pacquiao and Juan Manuel Marquez.
Magsayo looked disappointed and shocked when the scorecards were announced via split decision, he won on one judges scorecard with 114-113 in his favor, the other two judges favored Vargas with identical scores of 115-112, 115-112.
Vargas was declared the new WBC featherweight champion and two-division champion. Vargas could either rematch Magsayo or defend his titles against Brandon Figueroa who stopped Carlos Castro on the undercard in a WBC featherweight title eliminator.
