Boxer Adam Stewart of Huntington Beach connected with damaging uppercuts to the chin of Cashton Young, during a battle of heavyweights at Fight Club OC Thursday at the OC Fair & Event Center in Costa Mesa.
However, Stewart was defenseless against a series of left hooks delivered by Young.
In the end, many among the sellout crowd of 1,452 the Hangar, which included dozens of Stewart’s family members and friends who traveled from Arizona, were disappointed when the four-round bout was declared a majority draw.
One judge had Young winning, 40-36, and two judges scored the fight 38-38.
“I feel like I won the fight,” Stewart said. “I feel like I got the bigger stronger shots.”
There wasn’t much activity in the first round, but Stewart (2-0-1) landed the best punches, an uppercut that snapped Young’s head back, and then a straight right to the head later in the round.
In the second, Young (2-1-1) landed a sold left hook that seemed to stun Stewart.
Young landed a left and right to the body early in the third round and then briefly pinned Stewart on the ropes where he landed another left hook.
Stewart got hammered with two left hooks in the final seconds of the third, but came back in the fourth with another solid uppercut.
The fight ended with a flurry, in which both fighters connected.
Stewart, who trains out of Hill Street Boxing in Signal Hill, had stopped Young in the third round when the two fought as amateurs.
“I knew it was going to be a tough fight,” Stewart said. “He always shows up to fight.”
The second Fight Club OC event of 2017 featured four boxing matches and an MMA bout.
The hardest fought bout of the card was an eight-round battle of experienced heavyweight boxers, undefeated Mike Lee of Chicago, Ill. and Justin Thomas of Baton Rouge, La., who had just one loss going into the fight.
The fighters stood toe to toe and slugged for nearly the entire fight.
Lee, who has a business degree from the University of Notre Dame, improved to 19-0 with a majority decision.
Thomas dropped to 18-2.
In a middleweight boxing match, Lawrence King of Los Angeles won his professional debut with a majority decision over Brian True of Hawthorne.
King was the busier fighter in the first round, throwing and landing punches.
True (1-6-1) got going late in the first, throwing wild hooks that didn’t connect.
King was on the defensive for much of the fight but picked his spots when he saw openings
True landed a hard, straight right near the end of the third round and opened the fourth with a flurry.
But in the end, King simply connected more often than his opponent.
In one of the more anticipated fights on the card, Carlos Licona of Westminster won a unanimous decision over Cesar Sustaita of Juarex, Mexico.
The flyweight boxing match was scheduled to go six rounds, but was stopped in the fourth after an accidental head butt left a golf-ball sized welt over Sustaita’s left eye.
In an MMA battle of flyweights that went three five-minute rounds – Christina Marks of San Diego evened her record at 8-8 with a unanimous decision over Paola Ramirez (1-2) of Carlsbad.
