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Vasyl Lomachenko defeats Gamalier Rodriguez in featherweight bout

Vasyl Lomachenko lands a right to the face of Gamalier Rodriguez during their featherweight title fight on Saturday night at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.

Vasyl Lomachenko lands a right to the face of Gamalier Rodriguez during their featherweight title fight on Saturday night at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.

(John Locher / Associated Press)
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LAS VEGAS -- Vasyl Lomachenko has accomplished so much already.

Two Olympic gold medals. A world title in his third pro fight. And now a dominant win before what was probably the largest pay-per-view audience in history.

The Ukrainian opened the broadcast portion of the Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Manny Pacquiao undercard by knocking out Puerto Rico’s Gamalier Rodriguez in the ninth round.

Lomachenko (4-1) ended the bout 50 seconds into the round with a devastating right uppercut. Rodriguez (25-3-3), the top World Boxing Organization contender, seemed ready to rise, but then apparently thought better of it.

Lomachenko began to assert control in the third round, flashing a speedy combination, then whipping Rodriguez with the left to the chest and a hard short right to the face.

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Lomachenko knocked Rodriguez down with a hard left to the gut in the seventh. The challenger then had a point deducted in the eighth for a low blow.

In the second bout on the pay-per-view program Leo Santa Cruz, a Mexican fighting out of Rosemead, remained unbeaten with a unanimous decision over Tijuana’s Jose Cayetano in an active 10-round featherweight fight that featured nearly 1,500 punches.

Santa Cruz (30-0-1) dominated early and had Cayetano (17-4) moving backward for much of the night, winning every round.

In bouts that weren’t included on the broadcast, Philadelphia’s Jesse Hart ran his record to 17-0 by stopping Mike Jimenez of Chicago at 2:31 of the sixth round of their super-middleweight championship bout. Jimenez came into the night unbeaten in 17 fights.

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The middleweight fight between Chris Pearson of Dayton, Ohio, and hometown favorite Said El Harrak of Henderson, Nev., went the distance, with Pearson (12-0) winning a unanimous decision. El Harrak fell to 12-3. And in the super-middleweight fight that started the day, Brad Solomon of Lafayette, La., ran his record to 25-0 with a split-decision win over Adrian Granados (13-4) of Cicero, Ill.

A scheduled junior cruiserweight bout between Andrew Tabiti and Anthony Smith was scratched.

lance.pugmire@latimes.com

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