Olympic heavyweight silver medalist Richard Torrez made his professional debut but it wasn’t pretty.
Torrez knocked out Allen Melson three times and stopped him at 1:23 of Round 2 in a six-round match scheduled for Friday night in Fresno, California, not far from Torrez’s hometown of Tulare.
Torrez scored the decisive goal and scored Melson’s goal (6-4, 3 KOs) clumsily with his left hand in the second minute of the game. Then things got weird.
The Olympian appeared to end the match with a second knock as referee Marcos Rosales waved his hand over the fallen Melson. However, Rosales points out that it was a slip, not the end of the fight.
Then, in the final seconds of the opening half, a bump to the head resulted in a deep cut above Torrez’s right eye that caused blood to flow profusely.
In the end, the cut doesn’t matter. Torrez scored two more left-handed knockdowns in moments of grappling. The last one puts Melson on his back, causing Rosales to end the fight.
The official time is 1:23 of Round 2.
Torrez, 6 feet 2, weighs 228.25. The 5-foot-10 Melson comes in at just 201.75.
Torres lost Bakhodir Jalolov of Uzbekistan 5-0 during the gold medal match last August in Tokyo.
In other standout preliminary matches, former two-time world champion Joet Gonzalez (25-2, 14 KOs) stopped Jeo Santisima (21-4, 18 KOs) at 2:05 of Round 9 in a scheduled 10 innings.
Gabriel Flores Jr. (21-1, 7 KOs) defeated Abraham Montoya (20-3-1, 14 KOs) by majority decision in a 10-round junior lightweight match.
And Hector Tanajara (19-1-1, 5 KOs) and Miguel Contreras (11-1-1, 6 KOs) fought for a draw in an eight-round lightweight.
