The fifth was again a close affair, but it was Perez who was pressing the action. The pair seemed locked together at times, laying on the ropes and hammering away at each other’s mid-section. Arinze battled back in the seventh, when landing two right hands that knocked back the head of Arinze. The eighth, again, was competitive, and at the sound of the final bell neither fighter was confident they’d done enough. Perez, 32-3-1 (22 KOs), got the nod on the referee Darren Sarginson’s scorecard.
