Yesica Bopp dominates Luna Torroba and shows no signs of slowing down
By Diego Morilla
Getting to the top is hard, and staying there is even harder. But true greatness lays in the ability to make hard tasks look easy, and that’s what the great Yesica Bopp did on this Saturday, April 22nd in the town of Azul, when she defended her WBA mini-flyweight title against Luna Torroba with frightening ease, a little over a year after becoming a mom and almost a decade after embarking on an extraordinary professional career.
Bopp (31-1-0, 13 KO) went right after the Colombia-born Torroba (11-6-2, 2 KO) from the opening bell, scoring from all angles and opening a gash on her rival’s left eyebrow that dripped constantly through the remainder of the bout. The doctor was already checking Torroba’s fitness to continue midway through the opening episode.
In the second round, Torroba’s nose started to bleed, and that was just half of her problems. Bopp, 33, cornered her, pursued her, counterpunched her and pretty much ran the gamut of the entire boxing repertoire on her, being in complete control of the proceedings and simply overwhelming Torroba with punches.
Bopp’s most dominant round came in the sixth with Torroba virtually fleeing in panic from the relentless diminutive champ (who weighed almost a full pound below the contracted weight limit and looked extremely fast on her feet). One combination after another connected including a terrific left hook that caught the taller and heavier Torroba who was unable to move away from Bopp’s onslaught.
The seventh and eighth rounds were not any different, and when the job done in Torroba’s corner to stop her multiple wounds from bleeding any further did not succeed, her seconds saw no reason to allow her to continue and unceremoniously tossed the towel for referee Hernan Guajardo to finally halt the carnage before the beginning of the ninth round.
Always superbly fit, always extremely well prepared, the explosive “Tuti” is already considered one of the best in the business, but her place should be even higher in the list as a pure athlete. Her speed and athleticism were in full display in a bout in which apparently she couldn’t miss a punch against a feisty but completely overmatched Torroba.
With this victory, the search is now on for the elusive big fight like the one that her compatriot and friend Erica Farias is getting soon against Cecilia Braekhus.
“I’d love to face Susi Kentikian, I’ve been following her for a while,” she had said before the fight, pointing once again at her long list of possible opponents. “I would love to have a third fight against Jessica Chavez, a rubber match in a neutral country because we have one victory each.”
Lacking major challenges in her weight, Bopp needs to make a few dramatic choices if she wants to continue cementing her legacy and her place among the top pound-for-pound entrants in female boxing.
“I already did it against Daniela Bermudez, and I won,” she recalls, mentioning the two occasions in which she added the necessary poundage to her tiny body in order to seek the challenges that her own division denied her. “If it’s worth the risk and it motivates me, I will do it.”
In a mildly entertaining walk-off bout, Adriana Maldonado (1-6-2) and Virginia Carcamo (4-3-2) failed to score their first stoppage win – or any kind of win – once again as they fought to a sloppy but entertaining draw in four rounds of action.