Isaac Dogboe and Jessie Magdaleno promised fireworks when they met in the ring in Philadelphia and they more than delivered on that promise.
After getting knocked down in the first round, Dogboe bounced back and scored two knockdowns to win the WBO super bantamweight title in the main event of a Top Rank Boxing on ESPN card in Philadelphia.
Despite the early knockdown, Dogboe quickly went to work on Magdaleno and got revenge nearly halfway through the fight when a right right hand from Dogboe knocked down the previously unbeaten Magdaleno in the fifth round. Dogboe got a wave of momentum in the middle rounds and carried it through the end of the fight.
A left hand from Dogboe initially took down Magdaleno in round 11 and once Magdaleno got right back up, Dogboe unleashed a flurry of power punches to knock down the champion one more time, forcing the referee to put a stop to the contest. By the time the fight was stopped in the 11th round, Dogboe was up on the three judges' scorecards with scores of 96-91, 95-93 and 97-91.
The fight was originally supposed to take place on April 14 on the undercard of the Jeff Horn vs. Terence Crawford WBO welterweight title fight in Las Vegas, but when Crawford suffered a hand injury, the card was scrapped. Top Rank's Bob Arum then decided to move the WBO super bantamweight title fight to Philadelphia and make that the new main event.
On the undercard, Jesse Hart won the vacant NABF super middleweight title with a seventh-round TKO win over Demond Nicholson. Also on the television card, former heavyweight title challenger Bryant Jennings defeated Joey Dawejko by unanimous decision (98-92, 98-92, 98-92).
Dogboe is now the youngest boxer from Ghana to ever win a world title. He now joins the rest of the division's world champion class which includes Ryosuke Iwasa (IBF), Daniel Roman (WBA) and Rey Vargas (WBC).
