Zaragoza Gets Bloody Revenge, Wins Title : Boxing: Split-decision victory at Forum over Acero-Sanchez makes up for earlier draw.

Staring through a river of his own blood, 35-year-old Daniel Zaragoza battered and banged his way to another world title Monday night.

With defending World Boxing Council super-bantamweight champion Hector Acero-Sanchez bouncing away from his charge, Zaragoza dominated the later rounds to take a 12-round split-decision victory and the title before an announced Forum crowd of 4,170.

Zaragoza (51-7-3), who has been a profuse bleeder throughout his career, shook off at least three cuts and won the WBC 122-pound belt for the third time. Zaragoza, who is now 10-4-3 in WBC title fights, also once held the WBC bantamweight belt.

Last June in Ledyard, Conn., Acero-Sanchez kept the belt when he was given a draw, though Zaragoza was widely believed to have won the bout.

“This belt is my reward,” Zaragoza said through an interpreter. “He hit me more this time than the last fight, but I knew I won.”

Acero-Sanchez (32-3-3), who said he thought he was the clear winner in the moments before the decision was announced, bolted from the ring without comment when Zaragoza was given the victory.

“Are you crazy?” he said before the decision when asked if he thought he’d be given the victory. “No doubt this time. I threw all the punches.”

Judge Dick Young scored it for Acero-Sanchez, 114-113; but judges Terry Smith (116-112) and Tomatsu Tomihara (115-112) gave it to Zaragoza.

The Times scored it for Zaragoza, 115-112.

The taller, long-armed Acero-Sanchez, 28, picked at Zaragoza with sharp jabs and long rights in the early rounds, a strategy he ignored to his own penalty in the first bout.

By the second, Zaragoza was bleeding heavily above his right eye.

But the tide began to turn in the fourth, when Acero-Sanchez was given a point penalty by referee Vince Delgado for an intentional head-butt. Though the butt opened a large slash on the top of Zaragoza’s forehead, he seemed energized by the butt, and began to find the range as Acero-Sanchez tired.

Slowly, grindingly, Zaragoza piled up the punishment through the middle rounds with his still-heavy left hand. He staggered the champion in the seventh and ninth, and as another cut opened over his right eye, really turned up the heat from the ninth on.

Acero-Sanchez, making his third title defense, kept sticking and moving, but none of his punches seemed to have any significant effect on Zaragoza, who continued to absorb the shots and fire away.

“I may not have won every round convincingly, but I felt I won almost all the rounds,” Acero-Sanchez said later.

In the other feature bout, 22-year-old featherweight prospect Juan Manuel Marquez’s powerful left hook and sharp right hand wore down Julian Wheeler, leaving him staggered and grasping onto Marquez to stay upright in the closing moments of the final round.

With Wheeler uninterested in doing anything more than staying in a clinch after Marquez landed yet another heavy right hand to the cheek late in the 10th, referee Larry Rosadilla stopped it with just four seconds left in the fight.

Though Marquez appeared to control the fight, through nine rounds, two of the judges had Wheeler leading by a point.

Marquez, from Mexico City, raised his record to 13-1, with 10 knockouts; the 23-year-old Wheeler, from Virginia Beach, Va., dropped to 12-2.

Boxing Notes

After several weeks of negotiations, The Pond of Anaheim has scheduled a Wednesday news conference to announce a three-year deal with Forum Boxing, Inc., to play host to about 18 of the Forum’s regular Monday night fight cards over the length of the deal. The deal will kick off with a show on Feb. 5.

All fights of the series will take place on Monday nights, scheduled for every other month.