Main Events put all of its eggs in one basket in Houston last night on HBO's Boxing After Dark and came out with a 3-0 record.

First, Puerto Rican young gun Kermit Cintron outclassed and TKO'd Teddy "Two Guns" Reid in the 8th round of what was a gun-slinging slugfest. Cintron, who fights out of Pensylvania, was the bigger puncher as he dropped Reid in the 3rd round with an overhand right and wobbled him on several other occaisions. Reid, clearly the lesser skilled if not more experienced fighter, seemed to hurt Cintron at least a couple of times but mostly was winging punches and looking for a one punch knockout. His rough-housing and hitting after the bell did not go unnoticed by the referee, who deducted points from the Maryland fighter in the 5th and 7th rounds, but that was academic as the larger, harder-hitting Cintron floored him in the 8th round and continued to attack until the referee stopped the fight. The elated Cintron was teary-eyed and awarded the meaningless NABF belt, but he will have to focus on boxing more and avoiding getting lured into slugfests if he wishes to stay unbeaten and become a boxing superstar. All criticism aside, Cintron's punching power is no joke and he still looks like the real thing.

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The second fight on the card featured hometown boy Rocky Juarez against Oklahoma's Zahir Raheem. Raheem seemed to be outboxing the smaller Juarez until he took a knee in the fourth round after a Juarez left hook. However, Raheem's confidence soared steadily as the fight progressed, and he displayed some sound boxing ability. Unfortunately, Raheem also had to fight a third opponent in referee Robert Gonzalez, who kept unneccessarily warning him about holding Juraez's head. Although he deducted points from Raheem in the 4th, 6th and 10th rounds, I still had Raheem winning the fight by a score of 113-112. It's too bad the judges (two of whom were from Texas, as was Gonzalez) didn't see it that way as they handed the shaky Juarez, now 21-0 (14), a unanimous decision and Raheem, 25-1 (15), his first professional loss.

Headlining the card was another undefeated hometown hero, 20-year-old Juan Diaz, looking to take the meaningless WBA title away from Mongolia's Lakva Sim, 19-3-1 (16). (To show you how preposterous the WBA ratings are, #1 ranked Juan Lazcano recently lost to #7 ranked Jose Luis Castillo, yet the #10 ranked Diaz gets the title shot against Sim. Although Diaz is the new WBA lightweight champion, Castillo is universally recognized as the #1 pound-for-pound lightweight champ at 130).

Of the three rising stars showcased last night, Diaz looks to be the most natural and comfortable fighter. Though he seems to lack punching power, he ripped combinations at the game Sim from an assortment of angles all night long, winning a unanimous decision (I scored it 118-110 for Diaz) and picking up the WBA trinket.