Undefeated light middleweight Michael “Pretty Boy” Zerafa (11-0, 5 KOs) suffered a major scare en route to defeating Rey Anton Olarte (17-23-8, 4 KOs) via unanimous decision last night to capture the 2013 Bob Rose Cup at the Malvern Town Hall, Melbourne, Australia.
In the biggest test of his career to date, Zerafa suffered a devastating knockdown in round three to Sydneysider Olarte, which had Zerafa on wobbly legs and lucky to survive the count. Olarte’s southpaw style and awkward angles caused great difficulty for Zerafa in the early rounds, but the knockdown seemed to spur him into action where he rebounded strongly across the middle rounds.
Olarte continued to put Zerafa under pressure with his caginess going into the latter stages of the fight, with the final rounds seeing Zerafa and Olarte engage in some excellent toe to toe action. After the tenth and final round, the bout went to the judge’s scorecards, which read 97-92, 96-94, 95-94 to Zerafa, who captured his second Bob Rose Cup.
The main supporting bout was equally as entertaining as the main event which saw Joel Camilleri (3-2, 2 KOs) and the undefeated Oscar Ledlin (7-0, 1 KO) do battle for the Victoria State light middleweight title. Camilleri started strongly in his trademark aggressive style throwing bombs from both hands looking to end things early. Ledlin managed the onslaught with great composure and was able to exert himself on the contest over the middle rounds, negating Camilleri’s offense and scoring with numerous solid combinations.
Heading into the final rounds, the bout was up for grabs with both fighters leaving it all on the line, where at the end of round 8 it was hard to pick a winner. The final scorecards all read 77-75 all in favour of Ledlin, who stretches his undefeated record to seven wins from seven bouts.
Son of former Australian great Lester Ellis, Jake Ellis (2-0, 2 KOs), took to the ring in his second professional bout, making relatively short work of a game Saming Chopchai (0-2) at junior lightweight. Ellis landed a straight right hand to Chopchai’s head which dropped him to the canvas, which saw Chopchai’s corner immediately throw in the title to end the bout.
In the earlier undercard bouts, Terry Tzouramanis (10-1-3, 2 KOs) outworked Alex Ahtong (8-22-5, 5 KOs) over six rounds. Ben Capps (5-1, 1 KO) defeated Michael Dan Rubio (3-4-1, 1 KO) via technical decision at the end of the third round of their scheduled six round bout and in the opening two fights of the night, Craig Vitale (2-0, 1 KO) and Mike Esgandari (1-0, 1 KO) scored first round stoppage victories over Johnny Kavana (0-1) and Ollie Towey (1-1) respectively.