There’s a new player in the already loaded 154lbs division.

In a battle of unbeatens atop an OTX card on Friday night in Houston, Greek-born, Houston-residing Andreas Katzourakis ran through Roberto Cruz for a seventh-round stoppage.

Though he had been inactive for the previous year, Cruz, 11-1 (7 KOs), attacked first, jabbing his way in before attacking with body shots and straight right hands. In the second, he slammed home a sharp right that made Katzourakis take a hard, stumbling step backwards.

If you hadn’t watched, you would never guess that Katzourakis, 16-0 (11 KOs), grinned through it all.

From the beginning, Katzourakis fought with tremendous calm and a genuine smile – even when Cruz tagged him with good shots. Then he would let loose with a vicious volley, landing flush, and not only his victory seemed inevitable, but it looked certain that he would win by stoppage.

Katzourakis’ blinding hand speed ensured he routinely sent his offense on its way before Cruz delivered his. And though Cruz kept throwing, Katzourakis swallowed up the worst of the shots with a tight, high guard. Caught with uppercuts early, he smoothed over his defense and avoided the most damaging of the return fire.

Katzourakis snapped Cruz’s head back violently with a jab in the third and continued to break Cruz down with his versatile offense.

DAZN broadcaster Corey Erdman shared that Katzourakis runs 10Ks in camp, shearing off his best miles at a 5-minute and 35-second clip. You would expect that quick a boxer to be defensive in the ring, but Katzourakis was anything but. He fought relentlessly on the attack, flinging fluid combinations upstairs and downstairs.

A series of right hands had Cruz stumbling and grabbing to hold on in the fifth. Cruz looked dejected as he walked back to his corner in the face of an ever-complexifying riddle.

At the end of the sixth round, Katzourakis broke through. Cruz had been having one of his better stanzas, but in the final 20 seconds, “Katz” landed a left that Cruz didn’t see, sending him stumbling back into the ropes as if no longer in control of his faculties. The referee would have been justified to call a knockdown or knockout, but he instead ruled it a slip.

In the seventh, Katzourakis forced Cruz to the ropes and unloaded to head and body. Cruz, though brave and tough, finally couldn’t help but slump to the ground – this time for an official knockdown. He rose, but his corner did what so many support teams on the undercard should have done and threw in the towel.

“He’s no Greek myth – he’s the real deal,” Erdman announced.

This bout didn’t make Katzourakis the best junior middleweight in the world, or even one of the five best. But very few who watched him take Cruz apart would mind watching Katzourakis against those five best.

“In the second round, he came out with some more explosiveness and power,” Katzourakis said in a postfight interview. “I got caught with a right hand. It was nothing.

“Sometimes I like to feel the power of my opponent first. And then I wake up and do my thing.”

Owen Lewis is a former intern at Defector Media and writes and edits for BoxingScene. His beats are tennis, boxing, books, travel and anything else that satisfies his meager attention span. He is on Bluesky and can be contacted at owentennis11@gmail.com.