Soto Defeats John Molina Jr. for His Seventh Straight Victory

Make that seven in a row for Humberto Soto

The 34-year-old Mexican professional boxer, a former WBC Interim Featherweight, WBC Super Featherweight, and WBC Lightweight champion, won a unanimous decision against John Molina Jr. (27-5, 22 KOs) in a fight filled with low blows.

Humberto Soto

Soto (65-8-2, 35 KOs) won on scores of 96-91, 95-92 and 95-92 in a fight in which he was docked a point for a low blow by referee Jay Nady and Molina lost two.

“I felt very good in the ring but it hurt me when he hit me below belt,” Soto said. “But I was able to suck it up.”

In the fourth round, Molina nailed Soto with a bad low blow and he went down. Nady gave Soto time to recover and issued a hard warning to Molina, telling him to keep his punches up. But he couldn’t.

Molina continued to stray low with body shots, landing low blows that knocked Soto to the mat in the sixth and seventh rounds, and Nady docked him one point each time.

In the eighth round, Soto landed his own low blow that sent Molina to his knees in agony, but Nady did not take a point. Each man continued to target the body in a grinding affair, although they hugged each other after tapping gloves to begin the final round.

And then moments later Soto nailed Molina low again and Nady took a point from him.

“I feel he had more low blows. They shouldn’t have taken two points from me,” Molina said. “He’s a veteran and did dirty stuff in there. Back to the drawing board for me.”

Molina lost his second fight in a row. He had been trying to rebound from an 11th-round knockout loss to Lucas Matthysse in April — one of the most action-packed fights of the year in which Molina knocked Matthysse down twice and was dropped three times himself before being knocked out.

Soto won his seventh fight in a row since Matthysse knocked him out in 2012.

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