Big Wins for Amir Khan, Abner Mares and Joseph Agbeko

Amir Khan made the leap from promising prospect to star with his hard-fought 12 round unanimous decision over Marcos Maidana. Critics who questioned whether the 24-year-old's heart, conditioning or chin could stand up to the heavy-handed Maidana witnessed Khan live up to his hype in every regard. Khan dropped Maidana with a body shot in the very first round and his superior hand speed created problems for Maidana throughout the bout. Maidana, however, pressed forward round after round, landing power shots from the outside and uppercuts from short range. After losing a point for throwing an elbow in the eighth, Maidana stunned Khan early in the tenth and appeared on the verge of forcing referee Joe Cortez to stop the fight. Khan survived the round and weathered Maidana's non-stop pressure over the last two frames to get the fight to the scorecards. In the end, the judges scored it 114-111, 114-111 and 113-112 for Khan.

On the undercard, Victor Ortiz and Lamont Peterson fought to an entertaining 10 round majority draw. Ortiz knocked Peterson down twice in the third for a 10-7 round and seemed to do enough to merit the decision, but Peterson clearly impressed the judges with his clean, effective punching in the later rounds. Two judges scored the bout 94-94, while the third had it 95-93 in favor of Peterson.

Elsewhere, Abner Mares and Joseph Agbeko advanced to the finals of Showtime's bantamweight tournament. Mares, who bled profusely from a cut on the hairline above his left eye from the first round on and suffered a flash knockdown in the second, bounced back to score a flash knockdown of power-punching veteran Vic Darchinyan in round seven. Mares outworked Darchinyan down the stretch and was awarded a split decision that easily could have gone the other way: 115-111 and 113-112 for Mares, and 115-111 for Darchinyan.

Agbeko took the IBF belt back from previously undefeated Yonnhy Perez with an impressive display of conditioning and ring generalship. All three judges scored the fight for Agbeko: 117-111, 116-112 and 115-113.