Hernandez Does Job, Finishes Off Ramirez : Boxing: Next for junior-lightweight champion is surgery to replace screw in his hand.

Genaro Hernandez, who entered the fight all set to take a six-month layoff, cruised through the early rounds, landed a flurry of combinations as the fight progressed, then took out Jorge (Cocas) Ramirez at 2:35 of the eighth round Monday night before 4,549 at the Forum.

Afterward, Hernandez soaked his sore hands in ice and prepared for a vacation.

Ramirez, bleeding heavily from two cuts near his right eye, did not protest when the referee stopped the fight with Hernandez firing hard left hooks without Ramirez answering.

For Hernandez, it was his seventh successful defense of the World Boxing Assn. junior-lightweight title, and it comes as he prepares to take a layoff due to imminent surgery to replace a screw in his right hand.

Hernandez (30-0-1, with 15 knockouts), who flinched several times after landing with the sore hand, said he wanted to make sure he was patient against the veteran Ramirez (64-11-3).

On all three judges’ cards, Hernandez won every round.

The champion, five inches taller than the challenger, allowed himself to be caught on the ropes several times in the early going, choosing to absorb Ramirez’s short punches in exchange for big hooks of his own.

“I just went out there to do what I do best, and that’s box,” Hernandez said. “I wanted to take my time, relax, use my skills.

“I went in knowing I’m better than Cocas Ramirez, I’m a better fighter. I wasn’t overconfident, but I knew. I didn’t want to go out there just throwing punches all over and being careless.”

In the first two rounds, Hernandez did not move much and stood up straight as Ramirez bored into him. By the middle of the second, Ramirez had a small cut under his eye and Hernandez had been hit with some solid inside shots.

“We did that on purpose,” Hernandez said. “My brother told me I was getting the better of those exchanges. We knew that Cocas is an inside puncher and when he does that he tends to open up and I could get him with some clean shots.”

But Hernandez’s generally sluggish appearance in the first two rounds worried his corner.

“I was wondering when he was going to wake up and get into this fight,” said Hernandez’s brother and trainer, Rudy. “He was just enjoying himself, I guess.

“He knew he has a long layoff after this, and maybe he just wanted to stay in there, box, and get as much work as possible.”

By the third, Hernandez began to control the fight, slugging it out with Ramirez in the middle of the ring at the end of the round and knocking him back several times.

In the sixth, Hernandez teed off on Ramirez and opened up a large cut over the challenger’s eye, producing large amounts of blood for the rest of the fight.

For the rest of the fight, with Ramirez throwing few punches, Hernandez picked him with thudding left hooks and occasionally flashing the right across Ramirez’s wide open chin. There were no knockdowns.

Hernandez admitted he backed off at times when he could have gone in for the kill to make sure Ramirez didn’t head-butt him.

“That’s a big problem he has,” Rudy Hernandez said. “He doesn’t want to get cut with a head butt and it’s hard to be effective inside when you do that. We haven’t figured that out yet.’

Hernandez said both his hands hurt after the fight.

Hernandez has surgery scheduled for February for his hand, and said his first fight after the surgery will be a mandatory defense of his title.

In earlier fights, Young Dick Tiger scored an impressive first-round technical knockout over Florencio Loprez Ibarra, landing a sharp left hook that dropped him hard to the canvas. The referee stopped it at 2:34 of the first.

Tiger raised his record to 29-10 (19 KOs) and Ibarra fell to 8-2.

In a heavyweight bout, Dave Dixon (17-2, 15 KOs) took a technical knockout of Gary Winmon (13-2) at 2:27 of the first round.