On a humid summer night, professional boxing made its return to this summer horse racing city with an exciting mix of veterans and newcomers. Pugnacious Promotions and DiBella Entertainment  staged a quality card that had an outstanding headline with undefeated welterweight prospect and former Olympian Andre Berto (18-0, 16 KOs) versus veteran Mexican title challenger Cosme Rivera (30-10, 21 KOs) and also featured Philadelphia heavyweight prospect Chazz Witherspoon (18-0, 12 KOs) vs. Talmadge Griffis (26-5, 19 KOs).

Undefeated heavyweight Chazz Witherspoon spent the first six rounds of his bout with veteran Talmadge Griffis softening him up for later rounds. For the well conditioned Witherspoon, jabs and crosses were served up early, but Griffis still kept coming.

In the later rounds Witherspoon unpacked his multi-punch combinations with no returns from Griffis. The referee stopped the fight at 1:08 of the 9th round as Witherspoon was freely pounding the game Griffiis.

Even though Griffis was losing badly up to this point, the crowd booed lustily at the decision to stop the fight, although no complaints were voiced by Griffis. Former heavyweight champion Tim Witherspoon and his entourage were in attendance to cheer on his son.

In contrast to the Witherspoon fight, welterweight Andre Berto brought his big guns to bear early on veteran Cosme Rivera. 

As the thunder rolled outside in this steamy resort city, Berto rained down lightning quick punches on Rivera throughout the fight.Rivera, however, stunned Berto and the vocal crowd with a left hook in the 6^th round that took the legs out of Berto.

The fight then resumed as in the earlier rounds with the superbly fit Berto slicing up the overmatched Rivera. The fight went the full 10 rounds with Berto getting the unanimous decision and Rivera winning the praise of the crowd for fightly gamely.

On the undercard, middleweight Dhafir Smith derailed Kingston, NY native Brandon Michem  with a 4^th round TKO.

OTHER FIGHTS:

Irish undefeated super bantamweight Paul Hyland (8-0, 4 KOs) easily outclassed the shorter Allentown, PA’s Arthur Parker (1-1, 1 KOs) earning a 4 round unanimous decision.

Eurpoean and Irish national light-heavyweight champion Alo Kelly earned a unanimous decision over  Rafel Jastrezbski of Toms River, NJ..

Undefeated Tommy Rainone at 150 pounds won an unpopular 4 round split decision over Jorge Delgado.

The Chris Horn and Jonah Cogar fight ended in a no decision after Cogar suffered a fight ending non intentional head butt in the 2^nd round