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Domincan-born heavyweight Nagy Aguilera dropped Oleg Maskaev once in the initial round, and later fired a number of unanswered blows that forced the referee to stop their bout on the way to a first-round knockout of the former WBC heavyweight champion on Friday night at Memorial Auditorium in Sacramento, Calif.
The loss likely spells the end of a career for the Russian-born 40-year-old Maskaev (36-7, 27 knockouts), and breathes life into that of the 23-year-old Aguilera (15-2), who scored his 10th knockout and his second straight in the first round.
"I'm not sure that I remember clearly, but I think I caught him with a right hand at first, and then a left hook, and then, he dropped," said Aguilera, a Newburgh, New York, resident who was coming off of October's first-round knockout of Jerome Johnson.
"Then, he got up, but he was on shaky legs, and I just moved in and threw a couple of more punches," said Aguilera. "I think that it was a hard right, and then another left hook. I threw a bunch more punches, and then, the referee just stepped in and stopped the fight."
Maskaev entered the night having won 14 of his previous 15 outings, with 10 knockouts during that time.
In victory, Maskaev was to earn a berth against 39-year-old Ray Austin (28-4-4, 18 KOs), with the winner having an opportunity to face WBC champ Vitali Klitschko (38-2, 37KOs).
The 6-foot-8, 38-year-old Klitschko will be in his fourth title fight in the past 14 months when he makes the third defense of his crown on Saturday against Atlanta's Kevin Johnson (22-0-1, nine KOs) at the Post Finance Arena in Bern, Switzerland.
Now, however, Aguilera's management will attempt position their fighter for the paydays Maskaev was in for.
"We told Maskaev's people at the press conference that we thought they were making a big mistake in taking on Aguilera, but they did it because he had lost to Darrel Madison," said Aguilera's manager, John Silverman, referring to his fighter's split-decision defeat at the hands of Madison in July.
"We feel like we have a good, young, up-and-coming fighter in Nagy," said Silverman. "Certainly, we would love to see Nagy fight a Ray Austin, or, even, a Chris Arreola."
Maskaev's is most known for his two victories over former WBC champ Hasim Rahman, whom he stopped in eight rounds, and in the 12th round -- the latter dethroning Rahman as champion.
But all of Maskaev's seven losses have come by way of knockout.
Nagy Aguilera KO's Oleg Maskaev in First Round
Dec 12, 2009 – 4:22 AM
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