RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Brayan Leon added to his burgeoning reputation as one the super-middleweight division’s hottest prospects with this impressive performance but tough Aaron Guerrero forced him to go the distance for the first time in his career.

The 22-year-old two-time Cuba Junior national champion has been a key sparring partner for the main event attraction Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez for his last two training camps and recently announced that he has officially joined Eddy Reynoso’s stable.

And it was not hard to see why he is so highly rated by Canelo and the team on this showing of exciting power punching, which forced a heavy knockdown in the fourth round of this contest.

But although the counter right-hand, left-hook combination dropped Guerrero heavily, the man from Culiacan, Mexico managed to beat the count and fight on. And, despite constant pressure from ‘King’ Leon, the 29-year-old managed to navigate his way to the end of the sixth and final round.

Referee Bob Williams scored it 60-54 in Leon’s favour, which improves the exciting Las Vegas-based Ciban to 7-0 with six KOs.

Earlier on the undercard at the ANB Arena, where Ring Magazine champion Canelo and William Scull will meet for all four super-middleweight titles in the main event, Richard Riakporhe marked his heavyweight debut with a stoppage victory over Kevin Nicolas Espindola.

The 35-year-old Londoner, boxing for the first time since his unsuccessful bid for the WBO cruiserweight crown against Chris Billam-Smith in June, had built himself up to 235lbs for this outing.

However, he was still 62lbs lighter than 9-9 (4) Espindola, who had been beaten by other Brits Solomon Dacres, Frazer Clarke and Moses Itauma before tonight. And the Argentinean did his best to test Riakporhe’s chin in the new division with a series of leaping left hooks.

But Riakporhe did well to defend against all of them while patiently working behind the long, hard jab which had brought him success as a cruiserweight. He switched his attack to the body in the second round and Espindola was breathing heavily by the time the third started.

A left hook to the body seemed to hurt Espindola in the closing stages of the round but he made it through to the bell on his feet. He was down, however, from the very same shot with a minute left of the fourth. Again he managed to navigate his way through the remainder of the round but this time his corner decided to pull him out before the fifth could start. It was scheduled for eight.

Before that, vaunted prospect Marco Verde made quick work of his professional debut, seeing off the badly overmatched Michel Galvan Polina in just 94 seconds.

Olympic silver medalist Verde, boxing for the first time since the final at Paris 2024, had already landed a flashy check hook from his southpaw stance before he dropped Polina after just 20 seconds. The 33-year-old rose to his feet but was over again moments later. That proved to be the final knockdown as referee Bob Williams decided to step in with Verde teeing off on Polina, who was trapped in the corner. The official time was 1:34 of round one.

In the opening fight of the night, which kicked off a little after 1am local time, Riyadh native ‘Mighty’ Mohamed Alakel had it all his own way across six rounds against Alexander Morales. As such, referee Kieran McCann scored him a 60-54 winner which moved him to 4-0 but the 20-year-old is still awaiting his first inside-distance victory.