BOXING AT THE IRVINE MARRIOTT : Padilla Takes Fight Out of ‘Tired’ Castro

By the end of the second round, Jose Castro was exhausted.

By the 2-minute 24-second mark of the sixth round, he was knocked out.

Castro, the International Boxing Council’s super lightweight champion and a resident of Fountain Valley, was dominated by Zack Padilla in the main event at the Irvine Marriott Thursday night.

The referee stopped the nontitle bout late in the sixth round after Padilla (12-1-1) drilled a defenseless Castro (17-3-1) with numerous combinations.

“At the end of the second round, Jose told me he was tired,” said Herb Stone, Castro’s manager. “But we don’t have any excuses. Padilla, he was game.”

After a slow start, Padilla countered Castro’s attacking style with strong, frequent jabs and crisp rights. Castro (137 pounds) tried to keep Padilla (137) on the ropes with hooks to the body, but Padilla’s punches consistently had Castro retreating.

Those punches took a toll on Castro, who was visibly tired after Padilla’s late flurry in the second. Padilla finished strong again in the third and clearly dictated the fight the rest of the way.

Early combinations in the fourth and fifth sent Castro stumbling and Padilla finished him off easily in the sixth. The referee stepped in just before Castro’s corner threw in the towel, as it was obvious Castro was defenseless.

“We’re going to take a rest and see what happens,” Stone said. “I could see in the second round (Castro) didn’t have any snap to his punches. That made it a long night for us.”

Or more appropriately, a short one.

In a four-round preliminary bout, heavyweight Daniel Dancuta, a former Romanian national amateur champion now fighting out of Anaheim, defeated Rudy Gutierrez by unanimous decision.