The HBO Pay-Per-View Taylor-Hopkins card was filled with championship fights, many of which lived up to their billing.

Larios-McCullough: A Controversial Stoppage
Oscar Larios (55-3, 35 KOs) met Wayne "The Pocket Rocket" McCullough (27-5, 18 KOs) for the 12 round, WBC Super Bantamweight Championship in the main undercard fight. To many, this fight actually delivered the most action of any fight on the card. McCullough, a Freddy Roach fighter, constant fan favorite and owner of the silliest fight name ever, came out ready to fight. But countering the endless barrage of punches Larios typically puts up is a challenge for even the speediest, most prolific punch throwers.

In the first two rounds, Larios simply threw too many punches, too quickly, for McCullough to get a hit in edgewise. In the third, McCullough tried to counter one for one with Larios, but simply seemed unable to keep up. Larios returned to out-punching McCullough in the fourth. The fifth round looked like it could turn the fight. McCullough opened up a cut over Larios' eye, and then tried to capitalize by punching at the eye, making the fifth and six rounds the closest of the rounds. But Larios turned it back up in the seventh. And it was at that point, in the seventh, that McCullough seemed to abandon his strategy of trying to punch at Larios' cut and instead resorted to a more baffling strategy of dropping his arms to his sides and letting Larios hit him five or six times in a row before finally moving away. In fact, as though this weren't enough, McCullough actually attempted to egg Larios into hitting his open and exposed head at one point in the seventh. And so, from the seventh round through the tenth, Larios did just that. He landed blow after blow after blow to McCullough's exposed, unprotected head.

At the end of the tenth round, Dr. Margaret Goodman requested that referee Richard Steele stop the fight, and he did, declaring the fight a TKO for Larios at the end of 10.

The crowd was furious, and probably Dr. Goodman won't be receiving all the love in the world on fan message boards tomorrow, but what's obvious is that Wayne McCullough was no longer defending himself in the fight and had become, though a still standing target, nothing more than a target for Larios. Many would contend that the fact that there were only two rounds left in the fight is an argument for why the fight shouldn't have been stopped. McCullough seemed coherent. How much damage could be done to him in two more rounds? Of course, we'd all be saying something different if he'd been allowed to fight the final two rounds and been seriously hurt. Though McCullough was visibly distraught about having the fight stopped and adamant that he was good to continue, he could have simply avoided the situation altogether by not allowing himself to get hit in the head repeatedly while showing no ability or inclination to defend himself in any way, so let's not feel too sorry for him. The fight didn't get stopped randomly. The fight got stopped because a man was getting pummeled while showing seemingly no ability to defend himself. Isn't that what's supposed to happen in that situation?

Briceno vs. Montiel: Twelve Rounds of Bantamweight Action
When Evert Briceno (21-2, 17 KOs) met up with Fernando Montiel (31-1-1, 24KOs) for the WBO Junior Bantamweight Championship, we expected much of the fast punching action you usually get from the speedy 115 pound weight class. What we got were what seemed like twelve rounds where Briceno forced the action on Montiel by throwing and landing many punches, including solid left hooks and left upper cuts. Briceno's performance was even more impressive given that he only took the fight last week when Eric Morel's license was suspended after he plead no contest to a sexual assault charge in Wisconson. However, Montiel's more controlled, stylized boxing made the fight clearly a closer one than simply riding the wave of Briceno's energy might make it seem, and so we waited on the judges to announce the winner of the uninspiring twelve rounder.

Montiel won by unanimous decision. The crowd, who believe Briceno had won, was both angry and baffled and let their displeasure be known. Mostly, however, the crowd was just glad all twelve rounds of monotonous action with very little excitement were over.

Vernon Forrest: Is he back?
Vernon Forrest (35-2, 26 KOs) returned to the ring at 154 pounds in a ten round Junior Middleweight fight with Sergio Rios (17-1, 15 KOs). The fight was, to say the least, short. Forrest knocked Rios all over the ring in the first, and in the second knocked him down twice in before having the fight stopped in favor or Forrest at 2:43. The ring announcer quickly pointed out to the crowd that Vernon Forrest was back. The question is, have we seen enough to know if Vernon Forrest is back? Despite his record, is Sergio Rios enough of a fighter to be proclaiming that Forrest is back? Has Forrest problematic shoulder and arm seen enough action to prove he's back? The knockdowns were impressive and forceful, but this writer will wait until Forrest's next several fights to decide if he's really "back" or not.

In Other Action...
In the three other undercard fights, Vicente Escobedo (4-0, 4 KOs) added to his record by knocking Edgar Vargas out almost immediately at 2:57 in the first round in a schedule six rounder of Junior Lightweights. Abner Mares (3-0, 2 KOs) knocked out Elvis Martinez (10-10-2, 4 KOs) at 2:45 in the third round of a scheduled six rounder of Junior Featherweights. Finally, Jonathan Oquendo (4-0, 2 KOs) knocked out Timothy L. Carrizales (4-4-1, 3 KOs) at 37 seconds in the second round of a scheduled six round Junior Featherweight match.