LOS ANGELES (AFP) – Mexico’s Emanuel Navarrete survived a knockdown on the way to a ninth-round technical knockout of Australian Liam Wilson on Friday to claim the vacant World Boxing Organization super featherweight world title.
Navarrete, the WBO’s featherweight champ and a former super bantamweight world champion, claimed the title formerly held by Shakur Stevenson.
Wilson gave the heavily favoured champ a scare, knocking down Navarrete in the fourth round and hurting him again in the sixth.
But Navarrete, who improved to 37-1 with 31 wins inside the distance, turned the tables in the seventh and eighth with quick flurries.
Wilson rose from a knockdown in the ninth, but referee Chris Flores called a halt at 1:57 of the round with Wilson withering under Navarrete’s follow-up barrage.
