Hernandez Retains Title by Decision : Boxing: He scores unanimous verdict over Warren to retain his junior-lightweight crown.

Faced with an opponent whose style was more NFL blocking back than big-time fighter, Genaro Hernandez chose the hard route and had the sore hands and body to show for it later.

Against Harold Warren’s relentless head-and-shoulders-first charge Monday night, Hernandez, seven inches taller, decided to stay in close, allow his opponent to pin him against the ropes, and trade punches.

It wasn’t the smartest tactic in the world for the defending world champion, as Hernandez acknowledged later. But with 5-foot-4 Harold Warren boring his head into Hernandez’s chest through 12 long rounds, that’s what Hernandez did.

It kept the bout interesting through 12 rounds, but, in the end, Hernandez (29-0-1) walked away with a unanimous decision and retained his World Boxing Assn. junior-lightweight title.

Hernandez won easily on all three cards--118-115, 118-110, and 119-109--before 4,914 at the Forum.

But afterward, he seemed to know that he was flirting with possible trouble through the first seven or eight rounds, when Warren (25-6) was landing hard uppercuts to the body.

With his corner asking him to move to the side, Hernandez was content through much of the fight to lean against the ropes, absorb Warren’s bobbing head and shoulders, and fire away.

“I probably made it harder than I should’ve,” an exhausted Hernandez said. “I shouldn’t have stayed in there, I should’ve boxed him and moved. But I knew I’d get him with some good punches.”

Hernandez said he hurt his left hand early in the fight--”I was hitting him with so many uppercuts and jabs against the side of his head”--and was groaning in pain after taking what he said were numerous low blows.

In the early going, Warren won some rounds when Hernandez looked as if he couldn’t find the challenger with anything clean. Warren simply lowered his body, leaned into Hernandez and threw punches.

Both men opened eye cuts--Hernandez’s clearly by a head butt from Warren in the fourth--and landed several low punches.

“A short fighter has to make his way in,” Hernandez said. “I expected that. It took me a while to find a way to get a clean shot at him.”

Warren, 33, was the No. 1 contender getting his first title shot.

“I feel real proud of my performance,” Warren said. “I kept the pressure on the whole fight and it felt like I didn’t allow him a lot of the things that he wanted to do.”

After his early swarming attack, he seemed to tire from the eighth round on, unable to maintain the barrage. With Warren slowed, and Hernandez looking fresh and more willing to move in the ring, he pounded Warren throughout the last four rounds.

In earlier fights, former World Boxing Organization welterweight champion Carlos (Bolillo) Gonzalez defeated Rod Sequenan, an 11th-hour replacement for scheduled opponent Rudy Maysonet, who bowed out Sunday after failing a medical examination.

Sequenan, who had been in town sparring with Hernandez, absorbed countless solid blows to the face and head, but never backed up and dazed Gonzalez a few times.

But Gonzalez scored a unanimous 10-round decision, improving to 38-1. Sequenan’s record fell to 30-14-3.