Lamont Roach fought through adversity to mount a second-half attack that seemingly was enough to win his fight against
Isaac Cruz on Saturday, but the judges saw it differently.
Although Roach (25-1-3, 10 KOs) overcame a third-round knockdown and a broken right hand in the fifth, his junior welterweight contest against Cruz (28-3-2, 18 KOs) was ruled a
majority draw at Frost Bank Center in San Antonio.
One judge had Cruz winning 115-111, while the other two had it 113-113.
"I was mixing it up and backing up the pressure fighter,” Roach said during his post-fight press conference. “I disrupted him and started winning rounds, and that was after I broke my hand. You can tell by the way he started skating around the ring, trying to change his gameplan up. ...
"[In the sixth round], he threw a jab, and I blocked it and it hurt. I said, 'it's (broken).' I still continued to try and throw it, but my hand was really hurting. I'm not trying to make that an excuse. I used everything else that I had, and I succeeded. I got out of the way from his punches and was winning the exchanges. Other than that, I was catching and slipping his punches. I did well enough to win with one hand.”
As Roach battled through the injury, he increased his offensive activity and took the hard-charging Cruz out of his comfort zone. According to CompuBox, from the sixth round on,
Roach outlanded Cruz 106-72. Overall in the fight, Roach outlanded Cruz 191 to 159.
The majority draw marked the second consecutive fight that Roach left the ring with a tie. In March, Roach fought to a
controversial majority draw against
Gervonta Davis. Roach should have won the fight if the kneel-down Davis took was correctly ruled as a knockdown.
"All I want is a fair shake,” said Roach. “I think I should have won a close victory [against Cruz]. All I want is a fair shake. That’s it. … I don’t know what I got to do. I don’t accept this at all. I clearly thought I won a close fight. I’m tired of this.”
Manouk Akopyan is The Ring’s lead writer. Follow him on X and Instagram: @ManoukAkopyan.