Osleys Iglesias Stops Oliver Zaren to Retain the IBF Title
Osleys Iglesias stopped Oliver Zaren in the seventh round to retain the IBF and IBO super middleweight titles. The towel came in with 1:29 left on Thursday at Capitole de Quebec in Quebec City, and the Cuban left still unbeaten.
It was the first defense of the IBF belt Iglesias won in April. He dropped Zaren twice in the sixth, cut him over the left eye, and kept landing until Mikkel Kessler ended it. Referee Eddie Claudio waved the fight off at 1:31 of the round.
Iglesias, 28, moved to 16-0 with 15 knockouts. Zaren, 26, fell to 19-1-1 with eight knockouts. The scheduled 12-round bout was the main event of the Eye of the Tiger card on DAZN.
The sixth is where the fight turned. Iglesias put Zaren down late with a chopping left, then dropped him again off a combination before the bell. The ringside doctor cleared the Dane to continue. The seventh did not last.
Zaren came in from Roskilde ranked fifth by the IBF and unbeaten at 19-0-1. He had moments early. He did not have an answer once Iglesias raised the pace. Kessler, a former super middleweight champion, made the call his fighter’s corner had been weighing.
Iglesias fights out of Berlin and boxes southpaw under the name El Tornado. He won the vacant IBF title by stopping Pavel Silyagin in eight rounds, and this was the sixth defense of the IBO belt he already held. The stoppage was his 10th win in a row.
The next name on the board is not another mandatory. After the fight, Iglesias pointed toward the winner of Canelo Alvarez against WBC champion Christian Mbilli on October 31 in Riyadh. That bout headlines Mexico versus the World on DAZN.
Before this defense he had already said the rest of the division could not avoid him. “They can’t duck me anymore,” Iglesias told The Ring. “I’m here to be undisputed.”
Zaren was the opponent who took the date. Iglesias called him the type of challenger a champion cannot take lightly, and the Dane lasted into the seventh after two knockdowns. The size and the toughness were real. The punch output was not enough.
The Ring lists Iglesias at No. 2 in the division. A win over the Alvarez-Mbilli winner, or over WBA champion Jaime Munguia, is the fight that would test that ranking. Thursday only confirmed the first defense.
Iglesias leaves Quebec City at 16-0 with the IBF and IBO belts and a seventh-round stoppage on the résumé. Zaren has the first loss of his career. The towel ended it before the eighth.
