Highlights and results: Matias stops Ponce after five to win IBF title

Subriel Matias is now the IBF 140 lb champion after stopping Jeremias Ponce.

Subriel Matias won the vacant IBF junior welterweight title tonight, stopping Jeremias Ponce after five rounds of blistering, brutal action.

Ponce (30-1, 20 KO) started extremely fast, taking the fight right to Matias (19-1, 19 KO) at an incredible pace in round one, and then it got back-and-forth in the phone book for the next three rounds.

In the fifth, Ponce went down late and pretty hard, and when he got back to the corner, his team made the call to stop the fight, and Ponce didn’t argue.

It’s the fourth straight bout that Matias has won via stoppage in the corner between rounds, and the seventh time it has happened in his career.

“We worked for 10 months in the gym. I came here to win,” Matias said. “What I wanted to do was knock him out. I was looking to knock him out in the sixth round, so I wasn’t surprised that they stopped the fight (after the fifth).”

He added, “I saw he was hurt and looking back, and I’m like a lion looking for the feast. I found it.”

“My corner knows me better than me. It’s better to take precaution a minute early than a minute late, but I wanted to continue,” Ponce said. “I thought it was definitely even, but in this kind of fight, one punch can end it, and that’s what happened.

“In the first round, I came out to try to get him, but he’s a tough fighter. I knew this was going to be a very tough fight. You know Subriel Matias is a tough fighter, a strong fighter. He hit me with a shot, I went down. I did recuperate, but it was just too late.”

Ponce said he would like a rematch, but that’s unlikely to come next. I wouldn’t bet against him fighting his way back to it, though.

Matias vs Ponce highlights