Houston home cooking burns local

GLENDALE — While the exposure gained from fighting on the undercard of a major promotion figures to be well worth the effort, Vito “Casper” Gasparyan was unable to get what he was most ardently pursuing on Saturday night at Toyota Center in Houston — a win over the unbeaten Jermell Charlo.

The Glendale-based welterweight prospect suffered just the second loss of his four-year professional career in a unanimous six-round decision, with judges Gale Van Hoy, David Sutherland and Raul Caiz all scoring the bout 58-56 in favor of Charlo, a Houston native.

But after controlling the fight from the second round on, Gasparyan was crying foul at the controversial decision.

“I totally got robbed,” Gasparyan said. “I’m not saying I won all six rounds so decisively that they robbed me big time, but there’s no way that he won the fight.”

Gasparyan said he knew he would have to stop Charlo before the fight went to the scorecards, but that goal became more difficult when he was informed just days before the fight that the originally-scheduled eight-round affair would be truncated to six.

“It may seem like a small issue, but it’s not small,” Gasparyan said of the change. “If there was a couple more rounds I would have stopped him definitely.”

Gasparyan, 23, (11-2-4, five knockouts) had success countering Charlo’s jab with his own overhand right and was able to hurt Charlo (9-0, four KOs) repeatedly with solid counter shots to the body.

“I was pushing forward, everything was working for me,” Gasparyan said. “The only thing I’m kind of surprised about is that my power wasn’t good enough to knock him out.”

Charlo came out strong in the first round, following his jab with a good straight right, but Gasparyan came back to shake off an accidental head butt from Charlo that opened a cut on his brow and win the second round.

“I could have done a little more, but I gave up one or two rounds maximum, I won the rest,” Gasparyan said. “A couple of times he touched me with the jab, touched me with the right hand, but it was only a touch, nothing more than that. The only round I can say he won was the first round.”