In her first main event fight on ESPN, WBA, and WBC strawweight world champion Seniesa "Super Bad" Estrada (25-0, 9 KOs) was tested by former world champion Leonela Paola Yudica (19-1-3, 1KO) over the course of ten-action packed rounds at the Palms in Las Vegas, Nevada,
The scores were 97-93 on all three scorecards for Estrada.
Whoever thought Yudica was coming to lose didn't know her, as she proved a game adversary who was more than willing to fight tall and long forcing Estrada to use all of her mastery of range and feints in order to be effective in this fight. After three rounds, Estrada's coach, Dean Campos, told Estrada he felt that she was ahead two rounds to one, but wanted to see her become more defensively responsible.
Despite, many thinking this would be a one-sided affair, this was a highly competitive and close fight. The size of Yudica messed up at times the rhythm of Estrada. Heading into the seventh round, ESPN had Estrada up only by one round, and Yudica had the best round of the fight in the seventh. The final few rounds created high drama, as neither slowed down as both fighters produced a ton of offense, and Yudica seemingly started to get stronger.
Yudica's coach, Daniel Alcaraz, believed heading into the ninth round that Yudica was ahead as it began a battle of perception. Estrada was landing the more eye-catching punches, whereas Yudica was landing the straight shots from a distance, matching each other in terms of volume and being unwilling to back down. Estrada might have stolen the ninth round with a brilliant left hook at the end of the round.
Through nine rounds despite being outlanded by Estrada, Yudica and Estrada both had landed at 29%, which explained the even nature of the fight. The final round saw Estrada make a statement in the final round to pull away late and make a successful unified world title defense.
The numbers showed Estrada landed 29% of her punches as she landed 161 out of 549, to Yudica who landed 144 punches out of 506 thrown.
After the fight, Estrada called out the woman who holds the other two titles in the division, the WBO and IBF, Yokasta Valle, who sat ringside.
"I want Yokasta Valle next," said Estrada. "She can just hand me those belts because we fight it is going to be bad - bad for her."
Valle responded with the following.
"I am not afraid of you," said Valle. "You can come down to Costa Rica because I fill stadiums, not theatres."
