When people looked at the WBA featherweight title matchup for the January 26 Golden Boy Boxing on DAZN card, they expected Jesus Rojas to throw a lot of punches, but not many expected Can to do the same and even fewer people expected him to win.
Can pulled off the upset by defeating Rojas by unanimous decision (117-111, 118-110, 116-112) to win the WBA "Regular" featherweight title, his first world title. The fight took place on the undercard of the event headlined by Jaime Munguia vs. Takeshi Inoue for the WBO junior middleweight title.
The fight was a slugfest from start to finish as both men took every round to try knock each other out. The first two rounds alone saw both Rojas and Can each throw more than 200 punches. Can got the better of the exchanges early on, landing the right hand more often and pushing back Rojas at times in the first half of the fight.
Rojas did fight back, connecting with slightly better punches in the middle rounds, but the two boxers had no problem letting their hands go through all 36 minutes of the fight. It wasn't an easy fight for either man as 2,574 total punches were thrown in the title bout. Rojas barely outlanded Can in total punches 388 to 380, but Can was slightly more accurate, landing 30.5 percent of his shots while Rojas landed 29.2 percent of his punches.
In winning his first world title, Can joins a very short list of Chinese-born boxers to win a world title, a list that only features Zou Shiming and Xiong Zhao Zhong. Can also becomes the third WBA "Regular" titleholder at 126 pounds in less than a year with Abner Mares and now Rojas as the previous titleholders.
The current WBA "Super" champion is Leo Santa Cruz, who is defending his version of the 122-pound world title on February 16 when he fights Rafael Rivera. That fight will headline a PBC on Fox card from the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles.
