Garza Retains His WBA Title : Boxing: Referee ends junior-welterweight championship fight in 11th round by disqualifying Pazienza.

Loreto Garza retained his World Boxing Assn. junior-welterweight championship when challenger Vinny Pazienza was disqualified after picking him up and throwing him in the 11th round Saturday night.

Referee Larry Rozadilla of Los Angeles, who had taken two points away from Pazienza for fouls earlier in the fight, said later he disqualified Pazienza for “dirty fighting.”

“I disqualified him for consistently dirty fighting, for disregarding my orders over and over. . . . I had to do something,” he said.

Garza, comfortably ahead on points on most ringside scorecards, opened up a cut under Pazienza’s right eye in the second round and kept the aggressive Pazienza at bay for nearly the entire fight.

Garza was defending the WBA championship he won in Nice, France, in August. About 6,500 in Arco Arena saw fight, which was shown on pay-per-view television.

Pazienza (29-5), who has lost two of his last three fights and four of his last 10, looked like he had reached the end of the line. No one in his corner protested the disqualification.

Garza (28-1-1), who earned $100,000, can now hope for a high-dollar bout with Ray Mancini or perhaps Julio Cesar Chavez. Pazienza’s share of the Sacramento gate was $50,000, but he will earn another $100,000 from New England pay per view revenue.

Pazienza, known as a brawler/puncher, tried to box at long range for the first three rounds but couldn’t get around Garza’s jab. Pazienza went on the attack in the fourth round and employed an aggressive, almost wild offense the rest of the way.

But his cut opened badly in the sixth round, and the blood was streaming to his knees. His right eye also was badly swollen from the fifth round on.

At the finish, the judges had Garza in a runaway. Rodolfo Maldonado of Panama had it 100-92, Richard Strange of New Jersey scored it 97-92 and Fritz Werner of New Jersey scored 99-89. The Times had Garza ahead, 98-91.

The promoter, Don Chargin, lost one of his prime undercard bouts in the parking lot.

Popular Sacramento junior-lightweight Rowdy Welch was to fight Mauro Gutierrez of Tijuana. Gutierrez got to within 100 yards of Arco Arena before suffering a broken right wrist in a car crash in the parking lot.

That left former WBA junior-welterweight champion Juan Coggi of Argentina, from whom Garza captured the title. Coggi struggled early before knocking out Mexico’s Alberto Alcaraz in the seventh round.