By Rocky Morales at ringside
In main event action, Jonathon Esquivel (3-0, 3KO) survived an early knockdown to come back and knock out gritty challenger, Jerhed Fenderson (1-5) by way of TKO at 2:03 of the fifth round of a scheduled six round super middleweight bout.
It was a straight right counter from Fenderson in the second round that floored the southpaw, Esquivel. Esquivel did his best work fighting from a distance as Fenderson was able to be competitive when they fought at close quarters. Finally, midway through the fifth round, Esquivel unleashed a barrage of punches that badly hurt Fenderson. With Fenderson in trouble and Esquivel landing at will with no punches coming back, the referee waved off the fight to make Esquivel the TKO winner.
In other action, the fight of the night proved to be a scheduled four round middleweight bout between Nathan Weston (3-0, 2KO) and Nam Pham (3-4-1). The 6′ tall Weston had a strong opening round against the 5’7″ Pham who took the fight on very short notice and was just 0-3-1 over his last four bouts. Weston had a good opening two rounds but by the third round he seemingly ran out of gas allowing the decade older, Pham, to dominate round three. Pham picked up where he left off in the fourth round and had his way with the much bigger man to the delight of the fight fans in attendance.
The fight went the distance and at the conclusion of the fight, the crowd, in an OC Fight Club tradition, showered the ring with paper money, in appreciation of the tremendous fight. The decision went to the scorecards and Weston was very lucky to escape with a unanimous decision by a score of 39-37 on all three judges scorecards, a very unpopular decision to the crowd in attendance and to Pham, himself, who mugged to the crowd to an enthusiastic applause.
Opening bout action, a scheduled four round super middleweight bout, ended quickly as debuting John Mercurio (1-0) caught fellow debuting fighter, Jesse Merritt, with a barrage of punches in the corner. Merritt threw nothing back in return prompting the referee to call an end to the bout in the opening minute of the first round.
A sellout and standing room only crowd of 1,432 was in attendance for the usual sellout and were treated to an entertaining night of each boxing and MMA on this hybrid card.
Promoter for Fight Club OC was Roy Englebrecht Promotions and the venue was The Hangar at the OC Fair & Events Center in Costa Mesa, CA.