LAS VEGAS – The middleweight division has plenty of openings at the top, and Yoenli Hernandez is the most qualified candidate to fill the position.
Hernandez posted a breakout showing Saturday on the Premier Boxing Champions pay-per-view card at MGM Grand, scoring the first stoppage ever of veteran title contender Terrell Gausha.
Referee Allen Huggins stopped the bout 1 minute, 17 seconds into the fourth round as Hernandez, 10-0 (9 KOs), was teeing off at will on Gausha, 24-6-1.
Cuba’s Hernandez is ranked among all four sanctioning bodies, ranging from No. 1 in the WBA (where countryman Erislandy Lara holds the title) to No. 4 in both the WBO and WBC, and No. 13 in the IBF.
The division offers a wealth of title opportunities, with the IBF recently stripping belt holder Janibek Alimkhanuly and the WBO suspending him over a PED positive while PBC’s WBC titlist Carlos Adames this week announced he would next compete as a super middleweight.
Against Gausha, who missed weight by less than a pound Friday and was ineligible to fight for the NABO strap, Hernandez confronted a veteran who previously lost world title shots against Adames (by 2024 unanimous decision) and Lara (by 2017 unanimous decision in a 154lbs affair).
Gausha has fought the likes of Tim Tszyu, Erickson Lubin and Austin Trout, but Hernandez showed little care in throwing heavy punches from the outset.
Hernandez, 28, increased his volume in the third, battering Gausha with long-armed body shots and uppercuts.
When referee Huggins decided Gausha was merely covering up and getting routed, he stepped in to stop the fight on the undercard of Saturday’s WBC 154lbs title fight between titleholder Sebastian Fundora and former unified welterweight champion Keith Thurman.
The pay-per-view portion of the card opened with heavyweight Gurgen Hovhannisyan improving to 10-0 with his ninth knockout by stopping Cesar Navarro in a fifth-round flurry delivered in Navarro’s corner.
Referee Robert Hoyle stopped the bout after urging Navarro to show some offense as Hovhannisyan wailed.
When Navarro didn’t, Hoyle waved it over at the 2-minute, 45-second mark.
Armenia’s Hovhannisyan, trained in the San Fernando Valley by Hall of Fame cornerman Joe Goossen, carried a massive weight advantage of 281.5lbs to 210¼lbs over Phoenix’s Navarro, 15-4, and imposed his advantage while showing little bother in the face of Navarro’s own clean blows.
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.
