The spunky Dominican-Greek multidisciplinary combat sports veteran is headlining a card on Friday at the Galatsi Olympic Hall, defending her WBO super lightweight title against unbeaten Australian challenger Deanha "The Silencer" Hobbs. This will be her fifth career undefeated opponent and third in a row, all in under a year: first Alycia Baumgardner for the WBC International super featherweight title last July, and then Kandi Wyatt in March to claim the WBO title. Her only professional loss to date is by wide UD against Delfine Persoon in a WBC lightweight title challenge in 2016. Persoon has a strong case for having been the p4p best female boxer in the world for the last several years, and was recently on the wrong end of perhaps the robbery of the year against Irish phenom Katie Taylor. She moved from Santiago to Athens while still a tween, and soon took up prizefighting, spending half a dozen years in kickboxing (and racking up gold, silver and bronze in tourneys) before switching to conventional boxing at 22 and sticking with it for nearly a decade now. Her style retains some of that bouncy awkwardness from her background in kickboxing, although she appears to have made a smooth transition and developed into a nice tidy boxer-puncher. She is at her most effective darting in and out, alighting for a fleeting moment on her toes and delivering lightning-quick overhand rights. She also is physically strong enough to not be discouraged by clinching and will gladly wrestle and slash her way free. This content is protected Oh and she's kind of cute, in a prime Rosie Pérez kind of way.
