The rugged & tall (but with a thickly muscled upper body & broad shoulders, and powerfully built legs) Mexican-American scored a UD10 - a shutout across the judges' table - over Ed "The Lion" Paredes last night on UniMás. The rounds were a bit samey, with Paredes emulous throughout and having moments but with Chia's volume and looping sledgehammer combos doing early and continuous damage to Paredes' face and making at least partial contact even when blocked as Santana relentlessly forced the issue on the front-foot. This helps recover some of the ground that slipped away from Santana with his UD10 loss to Sadam Ali just under a year ago. It probably won't nudge him into any major org rankings by itself but will cover some distance toward getting there. Hardly anything new for Santana, who frequently has to keep trudging on through setbacks. Chia's time in the unpaid ranks was unremarkable - with thirty-something wins against forty-something losses. His style is more pro-suited, and he experienced some tough luck in the draws in most of the regional and national tourneys he made it to, often eliminated in the opening round. In the pros, he started off well but ran into Karim Mayfield twice in his first thirteen bouts. He lost a split decision and then by TKO5 in the rematch. Soon afterwards he would draw with J-Rock Williams and lose to Jermell Charlo. He dusted himself off and has since kept a busy schedule, going 12-1 (6) with his only blemish a loss to Sadam Ali on the Klitschko vs. Jennings undercard, in which many feel he did better than was suggested by the judges' scoring, with some even feeling he deserved the nod. I personally had Ali just squeaking by, 96-94. This isn't to say that he would have otherwise beaten Mayfield, Williams or Charlo but much of Santana's inconsistency in that early career period can be attributed to mismanagement as well as factors outside the ring affecting his focus. He bounced around between promoters (Goosen Tutor and Gary Shaw) and tried out different coaches (including Wayne "Pocket Rocket" McCullough) on his obstacle-laden road toward contention. Things have skewed on an upward trend in the last four months, in which Chia inked a promotional deal with Top Rank and begun to be managed by Frank Espinoza (Israel Vazquez, Óscar Valdez, Antonio Orozco, the Magdaleno bros..) and has settled in and developed a good working chemistry with head trainer Hoss Janik. In spite of the five blemishes on his record (and in fact, largely because of the way he consistently rebounds from them), Santana is very much a legitimate prospect-turned-contender. For just about every blemish (losses to Ali, Mayfield x2 and Charlo... and the draw with J-Rock if you even want to call that a blemish) he boasts a decent victory over somebody with at least a somewhat recognizable name: El Riel Hernandez, Joachim Alcine, E-Boy Gomez, and now Paredes.
Yeah he seemed to be going through his motions kind of mechanically in the 2nd half, taking it easy on Paredes except for some isolated offensive bursts to make sure there was no chance of him stealing a frame here or there. It was a "do enough" performance, for sure, not a statement-maker. (although I do rate Paredes a very good scalp. Probably his second-best to date, after Eddie Gomez...but that also happened to be a more rousing performance)
Beast, would you agree that he probably should have stopped Paredes in the late going? There were many times when Ed's head was snapped back violently and his reaction was always to seek refuge on the ropes looking vulnerable. Each time, Chia would just step to him busily throwing point-scoring hook combos to discourage Paredes from rallying, but he never seemed to go for the KO like he probably could've. I suppose the same could be said of Edivaldo Ortega on the other notable but largely unseen card last night (as far as I know you're the only person to watch both!) - normally he's a great finisher, and had Sánchez down in the ninth, but failed to close the show before the final bell. I haven't seen enough of that one to comment, though - just checked out your GIF highlights, and the roughly 20 seconds of video that have been posted.
Yeah, there's a reason I didn't mention the Mena KO among his best wins...probably isn't even top 5 in truth. Antonio Johnson was a better win for Chia.
