DAZN<\/a>. Their scheduled six-round contest ended after Vergara\u2019s third trip to the canvas.<\/p>\nThe placement of the punches deserves attention alongside the result. Two of the shots appeared to catch Vergara behind the head rather than on the legal target area. That does not establish intent, but it makes describing the finish as a straightforward display of clean punching difficult.<\/p>\n
Atang hurt Vergara early and continued applying pressure, with the Argentine unable to recover sufficiently to get through the round. The referee waved the contest off after the third knockdown, leaving Vergara with a 9-5 record and five knockouts.<\/p>\n
Atang\u2019s power was evident, but the apparent rabbit punches complicate what can be taken from this performance. Punch placement is part of a prospect\u2019s education, particularly when an opponent bends forward under pressure. The responsibility is to find a legal target rather than follow the head downward with punches.<\/p>\n
Atang has now completed nine professional fights in roughly 15 months since his July 2025 debut. His previous appearance ended with a second-round stoppage of Glen Williams in his American debut in July.<\/p>\n
Only Viktar Chvarkou has taken the York prospect the distance, completing six rounds against him in April. Those rounds remain valuable for a young heavyweight whose other opponents have been stopped.<\/p>\n
Atang recently moved to Stephen Smith\u2019s Liverpool gym, where he trains alongside more experienced fighters. Another appearance is lined up for December 12 in Monaco.<\/p>\n
A tougher opponent could provide a better indication of his progress, including his patience and accuracy when an early finish is unavailable. Atang has spoken about following a traditional route toward English and British titles.<\/p>\n
He leaves Sheffield with another first-round victory, but the apparent back-of-the-head punches deserve to be part of the recap rather than lost beneath the knockout total.<\/p>\n
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About the authorBoxing News 24 Desk<\/p>\n
BoxingNews24.com has delivered independent boxing coverage since 2007, including original news, fight analysis, schedules, and results. Our experienced boxing writers cover major fighters and events worldwide, with published content reviewed by editors for accuracy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leo Atang scored three knockdowns before stopping Jonathan Exequiel Vergara in the first round on Saturday, October 24,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":812861,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-812860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=812860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/812861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=812860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=812860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=812860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}