Don Chargin’s final show results from Brooks, CA
On a historic, somber and fateful night on October 6th, 2018, the boxing world said goodbye to boxing royalty as Don “War-a-Week” Chargin, promoted his final boxing card posthumously along with his longtime co-promoter and friend, Paco Damian, at one of their more memorable venues in Northern California, the Cache Creek Casino and Resort in Brooks, Ca.
I grew up learning how to cover boxing at the Chargin and Damian’s shows in Redwood City, Ca at the Fox Theatre, so the night was bittersweet as it will be a while before we see the promotion again if we ever do.
The main event saw supremely talented lightweight Joel Diaz Jr. pick-up a first-round technical knockout Miguel Angel Huerta. Diaz Jr. dropped Huerta in the first round and stopped him on the ropes with about with about 15 seconds left in the first round. This was Diaz Jr’s first camp with the legendary Garcia boxing family in Salinas, Ca, which feature head coach Max Garcia, second assist Sam Garcia and Kathy Garcia as Diaz’s manager.
Diaz Jr. has the talent to contend for a world title, and with this performance showed he is too much for a regional card as he blew his opponent out of the water.
In a highly anticipated rematch, Ryan “The Rhino” Bourland avenged his loss to Jose Hernandez by way of a 10-round majority decision to reclaim the GBO super middleweight title. The bout was very competitive and even with Bourland winning the last two rounds, those two rounds appeared to edge it as two of three judges saw the bout 97-93 in favor of Bourland, the other judge had it a draw at 95-95.
Fan-favorite cruiserweight Blake “The Beast” McKernan defeated a game veteran in Adolfo Contreras to retain his WBU cruiserweight title. The judges saw the bout 58-56 on two cards and 59-55 on another. McKernan had to make adjustments in the fight and picked up a wealth of experience.
Vacaville, Ca featherweight Ivan Vergara got a four-round decision over Pablo Cupul, Rudy Macedo got a second-round knockout over Yasmani Pedroso and middleweight Jorge Chavez knocked out Albert Leyva.
