Iron-Chinned Escalante Drops Decision to Villanueva

By Ryan Maquiñana
Norcalboxing.net

Escalante (white trunks) was lured into a war with Villanueva. (Jan Sanders/Goossen Tutor)

In a battle of unbeaten prospects, San Carlos junior bantamweight Bruno Escalante displayed an iron chin, but ultimately lost a unanimous decision to Palmdale's Matthew Villanueva.

Escalante (5-1-1, 3 KOs) captured the first two rounds by utilizing his footspeed and outboxing his much taller foe, but gave away the middle rounds as Villanueva (8-0-1, 7 KOs) outmuscled him on the ropes and scored with a hellacious attack.  Although Villanueva landed some crushing blows, Escalante was never noticeably hurt but was still outhustled in terms of volume.

While Escalante would take the eighth and final round by getting the fight to return to the center of the ring, being lured into a war from the third through seventh rounds ended up hurting him on the cards.

The official scores were 79-73, 78-74, and 77-75 for Villanueva.  Norcalboxing.net had it 77-75 for the winner.

Norcalboxing.net's Ryan Maquiñana is a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America and Ring Magazine’s Ratings Panel. E-mail him at rmaquinana@gmail.com, check out his weekly column for Comcast SportsNet Bay Area, his archive for BoxingScene.com, or follow him on Twitter: @RMaq28.

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