FORT WORTH, Texas – Flinging punches mightily to close nearly every round Saturday night, unbeaten cruiserweight Robin Safar gave his all to outduel Derick Miller and sufficiently impress his promoter, Oscar De La Hoya.

At Thursday’s news conference, De La Hoya floated major encouragement to Safar 19-0, telling the WBO and IBF top-10-ranked fighter that he would consider him for a shot at unified champion Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez should Safar win.

The victory was secured by scores of 98-91, 99-90, 99-90.

Whether or not that showing was enough, De La Hoya told BoxingScene this week that he expects his WBO/WBA cruiserweight champion Ramirez to be ready to return from shoulder surgery for an early-spring defense of his belts.

Safar endangered his cause early after blasting Miller with head shots to close the first and second round. As the second ended, he got agitated by Miller and whipped his head forward to brush Miller with a head-butt that drew a one-point deduction from referee Laurence Cole.

In the third, Safar again closed the round impressively with a combination of power shots, then hammered Miller in the fourth with an overhand right.

In the sixth, Cole stopped the action when Miller lost his mouthpiece. Safar timed his walk toward Miller perfectly as Cole ordered the action to resume, nailing Miller with a power shot to the head to impressively close another round.

The pair engaged in the ninth, and even though Miller appeared to be reeling from the punishment, he made it through the bout versus the WBO’s No. 5 cruiserweight and IBF’s ninth-ranked contender.

In other action preceding the DAZN-streamed portion of a card headlined by the WBC junior middleweight interim title defense by Texas’ Vergil Ortiz Jnr, 23-0 (21 KOs), versus former title challenger Erickson Lubin, 27-2 (19 KOs), middleweight Eric Priest paid the price for remaining evasive in the late rounds and saw his unbeaten start blemished by a draw versus Esneiker Correa by scores of 79-73 Priest, 77-75 Correa and 76-76.

Confronting a Miami fighter who has won 14 of his 16 victories by knockout, Priest, 16-0-1 (8 KOs), delivered his own power shot with a third-round right to the head that made Correa, 16-6-3 (14 KOs), lunge at the top rope to remain upright.

The pair exchanged effective power punches in the fourth, but it was the lack of action that defined the next four rounds and proved costly for Priest, who has eight knockouts through his 17 bouts.

Javier Meza, of Amarillo, Texas, defeated El Paso’s by unanimous decision scores of 59-55, 58-56, 58-56 to improve to 5-0 (2 KOs).

Meza dedicated himself to effective body punching to score early on junior welterweight opponent Briones, 3-5-2 (2 KOs). Meza’s blows began wearing on Briones in the third round, and a flurry with Briones on the ropes in the fourth led to a punishing set of combinations.

Trained in Indio, California, by Joel Diaz, Meza set up another thrashing against the ropes in the fifth, but in the final half of the sixth, Briones clocked Meza with two hard rights to the head – wobbling him with the latter to ensure there will be some defensive adjustments to be made in the gym.

In the card’s opener, Sam Castellanos delivered a second-round knockdown punch on Ricardo Elizalde that convinced the Tulsa fighter’s corner to stop the fight at the 1-minute, 55-second mark.

Castellanos, a junior middleweight, improved to 4-0 with three knockouts.

Lance Pugmire is BoxingScene’s senior U.S. writer and an assistant producer for ProBox TV. Pugmire has covered boxing since the early 2000s, first at the Los Angeles Times and then at The Athletic and USA Today. He won the Boxing Writers’ Association of America’s Nat Fleischer Award in 2022 for career excellence.