Yordenis Ugas absorbed plenty of punishment in his 10th round TKO loss to Errol Spence Jr on Saturday night in Texas.
The Cuban welterweight had his moments and even hurt Spence in the sixth round, but Spence pulled away in the later rounds and swelled up Ugas’ eye to the point where the commission doctor waived the fight off. Ugas lost his WBA title to Spence and suffered the first stoppage defeat of his career.
As was suspected and has since been confirmed, Ugas fractured his orbital.
“I have a fracture in my eye and in the next few days the doctors will say how they will treat it,” Ugas said in a statement released on Instagram. “I spent all morning in a hospital and I write these words with only one eye, the other one is still closed.”
ESPN reports that Ugas won’t need emergency surgery, “and will be reexamined at a later date after the swelling subsides to see if a medical procedure is required.”
This is the second time that Spence has broken his opponent’s orbital bone in a title bout. When he won the IBF title back in 2017, Spence dropped Kell Brook twice and on the second knockdown Brook went down on a knee and was counted out. Brook suffered a left orbital fracture, just a few months after he broke the right orbital against Gennadiy Golovkin.
Spence is now the unified WBA, WBC, and IBF welterweight champion, and only WBO champ Terence Crawford stands in the way of his claim to being the undisputed king at 147 lbs.
About the author
