With a little less pressure on him in a lower-profile position on a card, Nico Ali Walsh stopped Jeremiah Yeager in the second round Saturday night in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
The unbeaten Ali Walsh’s fourth victory and third knockout came seven weeks after a mediocre performance at Madison Square Garden. A grandson of Muhammad Ali, the developing Ali Walsh struggled to a four-round, majority-decision win over Reyes Sanchez in a fight ESPN televised December 11 as part of the Vasiliy Lomachenko-Richard Commey undercard.
He had no such difficulty against Yeager (1-2-1, 1 KO), a 31-year-old Erie, Pennsylvania, native who has much more experience in mixed martial arts than boxing.
Ali Walsh knocked Yeager flat on his back with 45 seconds to go in the second round on the Xavier Martinez-Robson Conceicao undercard at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino. Yeager beat referee Gary Ritter’s count, but he didn’t have his legs under him.
An aggressive Ali Walsh swarmed him and landed a left hook that knocked Yeager into the ropes. That’s when Ritter stepped between them to halt the action at 2:39 of the second round.
Yeager landed two clean right hands within an eight-second span around the midway mark of the opening round. Ali Walsh came back to blast Yeager with a left-right-left combination with just under a minute to go in the first round.
The 21-year-old Walsh, a senior at UNLV who will graduate in the spring, fought for the first time with a new head trainer, Richard Sloan, in his corner. Sloan, who assisted in training Walsh prior to this bout, replaced Tyson Fury’s trainer, Javan “Sugar Hill” Steward, in Walsh’s corner.
Steward, a nephew of late legend Emanuel Steward, and Walsh still communicate daily by phone, but Fury’s trainer couldn’t commit the time to working with Walsh that the young fighter needs to develop.
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.