Despite being caught cold and dropped in the first round, Andrade had the skills to recover and used his lengthy reach to frustrate Martirosyan and keep him off as he went for the knockout early on.
Martirosyan certainly had the better of the first half of the fight, although Andrade was at no point out of the fight and there were a couple of rounds that could have easily gone either way.
From round seven onwards though Andrade took total control of the contest and on my card only dropped the eighth as ‘Boo Boo’ deservedly became a world champion in his 20th career fight.
The three judges scorecards read 117-110, 114-113 and surprisingly 115-112 to Martirosyan, who at the end could hardly raise his fist to mask a potential victory celebration as he probably knew deep down he hadn’t done enough.
Andrade could now find himself a target for some of the bigger names in the division who may see him as a weak champion, but in my book the Providence fighter can fine tune his style to be a dangerous player at 154 for the foreseeable future.
Earlier in the night, Top Rank future stars Alex Saucedo and Oscar Valdez stopped Steve Hall and Jesus Lule in the third and fifth round respectively to keep up their perfect records.
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