JOHN RIEL Casimero of the Philippines turned heads in his US television debut, scoring a vicious third-round stoppage of Ghana's Duke Micah to retain his WBO bantamweight championship on Sunday morning.
Casimero, 31, dropped the previously unbeaten Micah in the second round with a left hook before stopping him for good in the third round of one of the featured title fights at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Connecticut.
The impressive TKO win put a happy ending to a seven-month stay in the US for Casimero, who headed overseas to prepare for a mega-fight against Japan's Naoya 'Monster' Inoue only to see it postponed a couple of times before being shelved for good.
To celebrate, and as if to show he barely broke a sweat in the TKO win, Casimero did six one-hand pushups inside the ring to the delight of the crowd.
Casimero's first order of business after the win was call out Inoue.
"I'm the real monster. Naoya Inoue is scared of me. You're next. I would have knocked out anyone today," Casimero told CBS Sports. "If Inoue doesn't fight me, then I'll fight Guillermo Rigondeaux, Luis Nery, or any of the top fighters."
According to Compubox, Casimero landed 52 percent of his power punches to totally outclass Micah, who only had 59 landed punches.
He was at his best in the third round, folding Micah with a couple of body shots before a pair of uppercuts sent Micah reeling to a corner, forcing referee Steve Willis to jump in and stop the fight.
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