Former junior middleweight titleholder Sadam Ali moved back down to welterweight and got his hand raised tonight, outpointing tricky veteran Mauricio Herrera over 10 rounds on the Canelo-Rocky undercard.
Ali won on scores of 98-92, 99-91, and 100-90. BLH had it 96-94 and 98-92 for Ali, who improves to 27-2 (14 KO) with the victory, which comes on the heels of his May loss to Jaime Munguia, where he was completely overpowered by a bigger man at 154 pounds.
Truth be told, Ali didn’t look particularly great here, struggling to land clean on Herrera (24-8, 7 KO), but that’s not a new story for Herrera’s opponents over his career, and even at 38 and fighting above his best weight, Herrera was still something of a pain in the ass for a younger, more athletic fighter.
Ali will now look to move forward in 2019 and perhaps find a bigger fight at welterweight next time out. There’s no shortage of talent in that division, but the bulk of the top names — Errol Spence Jr, Keith Thurman, Manny Pacquiao, Shawn Porter, Danny Garcia, etc. — are with PBC, and Terence Crawford is with Top Rank and ESPN. So finding a top dance partner could be tough, but we’ll see.
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