Hernandez Finishes Off Perez in Eighth Round : Boxing: Mission Viejo fighter is successful in sixth WBA junior-lightweight title defense.

Genaro Hernandez, with one withering left hook to the lower right rib cage of Raul Perez, set himself up Monday night for a probable fall championship defense against with Oscar De La Hoya or Azumah Nelson.

Hernandez, seemingly on his way to a decision over Perez, slammed a left hook into his ribs at 2:11 of the eighth round. Perez froze for a split second, then toppled forward on his face.

He lay face down while referee Lou Moret counted him out and didn’t come to a sitting position until 1 minute 20 seconds later. It was another five minutes before he was on his feet.

The frail-looking Hernandez, with 14 knockouts in his 28-0-1 record, said he knew almost instantly the left hook had ended the fight.

“When I saw the look on his face when I hit him, I knew it was over,” Hernandez said.

While the finish was a stunner, Hernandez’s knockout blow seemed only to have shortened the inevitable. In his sixth defense of his World Boxing Assn. junior-lightweight (130 pounds) championship, Hernandez was well ahead.

After seven, two judges had Hernandez ahead, 69-64, and another had him up, 70-63. The Times card had Hernandez ahead, 70-63.

The bout was a rematch of their first fight, two months ago, which ended at 28 seconds of the first round when a butt cut Perez’s forehead.

The Tijuana fighter was cut again Monday, this time in the third round, over his right brow. Perez’s cutman, Chuck Bodak, managed to stem the flow of blood between rounds the rest of the way.

Perez, a former world bantamweight and super-bantamweight champion, was one of the dominant champions in his sport when he was entertaining Forum crowds as recently as 1990, when he was a 118-pounder.

But after he moved up in weight in 1991, he seemed to lose sharpness as well as hitting power.

Perez (130) pressed the action for the most part. But Hernandez hit Perez (130) with jabs, left hooks and straight right hands virtually at will. Perez’s best punches never seemed to trouble the champion, who several times laid on the ropes and let Perez punch at will . . . and smiled at him.

Hernandez set the tone in the first round, when with two minutes left, he was having target practice. Midway through the third round, the champion from Mission Viejo hit Perez with 14 consecutive punches.

When Hernandez rocked Perez with a long right hand with 1:35 left in the seventh round, he seemed to be close to a knockout, but Perez slipped away.

While many have said a Hernandez victory over Perez would set up a fall showdown with De La Hoya, Hernandez said Monday he would rather challenge Ghana’s Nelson for his World Boxing Council junior-lightweight championship.

In a 10-round companion bout, Puerto Rican Wilfredo Rivera (16-0-1) stayed alive in the Forum’s welterweight tournament by winning a unanimous decision over Lonnie Smith (31-4-2) of Las Vegas.