Rolly Romero returns with win, beats Jaimes over 10 rounds

Rolly Romero returned with a win over Manuel Jaimes to kick off tonight’s PPV.

Rolly Romero bounced back from defeat tonight, returning to action with a 10-round unanimous decision win over Manuel Jaimes to kick off the Canelo vs Berlanga pay-per-view card in Las Vegas.

Romero (16-2, 13 KO) took the fight on scores of 99-91 from all three judges, never facing any serious push-back from Jaimes (16-2-1, 11 KO), who was seen as a live dog coming into the fight but never much fought like one.

Jaimes, 24, was stepping up in level a bit and certainly in spotlight against the 28-year-old Romero, who still manages to draw massive attention as one of boxing’s modern villains, a guy people will pay to see even if they’re paying to see him lose.

Romero arguably showed a bit of improvement in this fight, at least a bit more defensively responsible, but it was also a fairly dull affair where nobody really took too much initiative or stepped on the gas, other than Romero fighting a bit harder in the eighth round than he had for much of the rest of the bout.

On the prelims tonight, Stephen Fulton also came back from defeat with a win, moving up to featherweight and taking a split decision over Carlos Castro, who will likely be kicking himself for letting the fight get away. Fulton improves to 22-1 (8 KO) as he enters a very competitive division, while Castro drops to 30-3 (14 KO).

In other action, Ricardo Salas scored an upset knockout win over Roiman Villa in round three. The 25-year-old Salas (20-2-2, 15 KO) came in pretty much unknown, while Villa (26-3, 24 KO) was trying to bounce back from being dominated by Jaron “Boots” Ennis a little over a year ago.