The Japanese world champion was rocked in the opening round by the Mexican and did well to stay on his feet to keeping trading with Vargas until the end of the session.
By the third, Miura had woken from his slumber and began to inflict damage of the right cheek of Vargas with a succession of solid straight left hands. Another one of those punches dropped Vargas hard in the fourth and from then on it seemed that Miura would then take control of the bout.
Back came Vargas in the sixth to close the gap, although his facial damage continued to worsen as the pair headed into the second half of the contest. Miura came on strong in the seventh to open up a cut above the right eye of Vargas as the 31 year-old sensed he could end the fight imminently.
The end almost came in the eight when another crushing left dipped the knees of Vargas, who wouldn’t have survived the round had their been ten more seconds to go.
Amazingly, at the start of the ninth, Vargas belted Miura with a magnificent uppercut to completely turn the tide in the fight. Miura went down hard and was all over the place for a good 45 seconds until Tony Weeks saved the 31 year-old from taking any more damaging head shots.
Vargas, 30, claims his first world title and improves to 24-0-1 in the process, whilst a second fight between the two in 2016 would be most welcome.
Guillermo Rigondeaux proved his critics right once again with a drab ten round win over Drian Francisco. ‘Rigo’ claimed a fringe WBC super bantamweight belt in taking every round of ten on the cards, but was thoroughly booed for the duration and remains a hard sell despite his considerable talent.
Jayson Velez failed to impress against Ronny Rios as the Puerto Rican former world title challenger lost for the first time in his career.
The 27 year-old missed out on claiming the vacant WBC Silver featherweight title as Velez was given more than he could handle at times by the Californian.
After ten rounds, Rios, 25, took the triumph 97-92, 96-93 and 95-94 on points despitebeging deducted midway through the fight by official Jay Nady.
Rios was guilty of hitting low on more than one occasion and eventually docked a point in the fifth, when in actual fact his cleaner work could have made it a closer fight.
Undefeated flyweight Jose Martinez kept his perfect run going whilst in the process ended that of Oscar Mojica by taking an eight round decision 78-74 on all three cards.
At featherweight, Alberto Machado dropped Tyrone Luckey twice before forcing a stoppage at the end of the very first round. Machado pushes his record to 12-0 with a tenth knockout.
Earlier, heavyweight Zhilei Zhang recovered from a final round knockdown to out-point Juan Goode 38-37 on all cards over four rounds, whilst lightweight Hector Tanajara knocked out Jose Naranjo in the first round to move to 4-0.
