COSTA MESA – Boxer Ronny Rios of Santa Ana made his 2011 debut Friday night at The Hangar at the OC Fair and Event Center.
Rios, 20, went the distance in an eight-round fight, defeating Georgi Kevlishvili by unanimous decision in a super-featherweight fight in the co-feature of the evening in front of 1,207.
One judge scored the fight 78-74 and the other two had it 77-75, all for Rios, who improved his record to 14-0. Kevlishvili falls to 12-2.
“I know it was an exciting fight, but to be honest with you, I really didn’t like my performance,” Rios said.
“I’m glad I got the W. It wasn’t what I wanted it to be, so I just want to go back to the gym and improve.”
Rios entered off a five-month layoff. His last fight came in December 2010 when he defeated Adolfo Landeros by unanimous decision.
Rios went 5-0 in 2010.
He said he felt the ring rust but said his conditioning wasn’t a problem. He added that he’s looking to get back into the ring “the sooner, the better.”
“I felt it a little bit,” he said.
Rios said the game plan going in was to attack Kevlishvili to the body, since he hadn’t seen any tapes of him and established that goal from the outset.
“Obviously, we knew he was going to be a stand up guy, who was probably going to run and come in with the typical European style of fighting,” Rios said.
“He ended up being a little bit more awkward than we expected, and that kind of threw me off of my game plan a little bit, but we adjusted and I started doing what my corner was telling me to do.”
Rios suffered a cut over his left eye after a head butt toward the end of the third round.
In the sixth, Rios landed two big hooks to the body, which led to Rios getting off several combinations to the head of Kevlishvili.
There were no knockdowns.
Rios spent a week of training for this fight in Big Bear. However, he said he felt a little disconnected from his coaches.
In the main event, Christopher Martin of San Diego improved to 22-0-2 with a 10-round unanimous decision over Charles Huerta (16-3) of Paramount. One judge scored it 99-91 and two judges had it 96-94.
On the undercard, junior-lightweight Joel Diaz Jr. improved to 4-0 with a first-round stoppage of Kendall Ward in the opening fight of the night at 2:19.