Diego Pacheco Drops, Stops Enrique Collazo In 5th Round On Canelo-Golovkin Undercard

LAS VEGAS – Diego Pacheco barely landed punches through the first four rounds of his fight with Enrique Collazo on Saturday.

When Pacheco finally caught Collazo with a flush right hand, Collazo couldn’t take it. Pacheco dropped Collazo with 1:10 to go in the fifth round of their super middleweight bout on the Canelo Alvarez-Gennadiy Golovkin undercard at T-Mobile Arena.

Collazo responded to referee Celestino Ruiz’s count in time to continue, but he was still hurt and didn’t last much longer. Pacheco hit him with two more right hands that eventually led to Ruiz stopping their scheduled 10-round, 168-pound fight at 2:29 of the fifth round.

Puerto Rico’s Collazo (16-3-1, 11 KOs) represented a step up in competition for Los Angeles’ Pacheco (16-0, 13 KOs), a 21-year-old prospect who became the first opponent to stop him.

After four mostly mundane rounds, Pacheco finally began timing the cautious Collazo, who boxed almost exclusively off his back foot, in the fifth round.

A right uppercut from Pacheco landed just 1:10 into the fifth round. Pacheco sent Collazo to the canvas approximately 40 seconds later.

Pacheco cut Collazo with a right hand around 1:10 into the fourth round. Another right hand from Pacheco caused Collazo to hold him with just under 20 seconds left in the fourth round.

Pacheco connected with a right hand just under two minutes into the third round, another three minutes of indescribable “action.”

After an uneventful first round, Collazo and Pacheco spent most of the second round faking and sizing each other up, not throwing many punches. Neither Pacheco nor Collazo threw many punches during a dull and actionless first round.

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.