Frampton Out-Slugs Santa Cruz in Legendary War

The Barclays Center in Brooklyn was given an early Christmas present as Carl Frampton dethroned previously-unbeaten Leo Santa Cruz over 12 ferocious rounds of nearly nonstop action. Their epic battle headlined a Showtime Championship Boxing event and is an instant candidate for fight of the year.

Santa Cruz (32-1-1, 18 KOs) was nailed by a wicked left hook in the second and was nearly taken off his feet. “The Jackal” charged in for an early knockout, but the Mexican showed his warrior spirit and was able to clear his head. From there, the two featherweights each took turns laying into each other for the next 10 rounds, but Frampton was just a tad better overall down the stretch.

Santa Cruz forced the Irishman into several brutal exchanges, but Frampton (23-0, 14 KOs) typically got the better of the two. Santa Cruz was relentless with his pressure, though, and even though Frampton was elusive with his superb defense at times, he was still forced into fierce back-and-forth exchanges.

With time running out and his WBA 126-pound title slipping away, Santa Cruz slammed on the accelerator in an attempt to rally late. Frampton obliged, igniting the frenzied crowd into pandemonium as they stood toe-to-toe for much of the final three rounds. In the end, two of the three judges scored the war in favor of Frampton 116-112 and 117-111 while the third judge had it even at 114-114.

The win gave Frampton a world title in a second weight class. The new featherweight champion previously held the WBA and IBF belts at super bantamweight.

After more than two years away from boxing for myriad reasons, Mikey Garcia (35-0, 27 KOs) returned with a sensational performance in the co-feature. Garcia dominated Elio Rojas from the start and wound up flooring him four times en route to a fifth-round stoppage win. Garcia dropped Rojas (24-3, 14 KOs) twice in the third and then twice more in fifth and finally put him away for good at 2:02 into the stanza.

Tony Harrison (24-1, 20 KOs) took out Sergey Rabchenko in the ninth to win an IBF junior middleweight title eliminator. Harrison felled Rabchenko (27-2, 20 KOs) with a missile of a right, ending the fight right then and there. The official time of the TKO was 1:18 of the ninth.

Finally, former world champion Paulie Malignaggi (35-7, 7 KOs) boxed beautifully over 10 rounds to edge Gabriel Bracero via unanimous decision. Malignaggi was elusive throughout the encounter and countered Bracero (24-2, 5 KOs) when he needed to, which was more than enough to earn the judges’ favor. Malignaggi was given the nod with scores of 96-94 and 98-92 (twice) to retain his Brooklyn Championship” belt.