Puerto Rico’s Xander Zayas has become boxing’s youngest active world champion at the age of 22 by gaining a unanimous points victory over Mexico’s Jorge Garcia Perez to win the vacant WBO light-middleweight title.<\/b><\/p>\n
At New York’s Madison Square Garden on Saturday, Zayas secured a dominant points victory by margins of 116-112, 118-110 and 119-109.<\/p>\n
“This is a dream come true,” said Zayas, who turned professional at 17. “This is beautiful. To see my Puerto Rican fans here, this is amazing. I could never dream of anything better than this.”<\/p>\n
Unbeaten Zayas, who has won all 22 of his professional fights, took control of the contest with quick jabs to the body and powerful rights.<\/p>\n
Garcia, suffering only his fifth loss in his 38th bout, managed to go toe-to-toe with Zayas in a thrilling sixth round, but could not maintain that pressure as Zayas was able to show his class and dominate the later rounds.<\/p>\n
“I had to box my way to victory,” added Zayas. “I knew if I stood in front of him I’d be fighting his fight. So, I did everything behind the jab. The jab was the key to victory, and we showed that.”<\/p>\n
US-born Puerto Rican Wilfred Benitez holds the record for being the youngest-ever world champion as he was 17 years and 176 days when he won the WBA light-welterweight belt in March 1976.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Puerto Rico’s Xander Zayas has become boxing’s youngest active world champion at the age of 22 by gaining…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295869,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4108],"tags":[1935,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-295868","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114925233013056904","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}