Gonzalez stops Mtagwa to keep WBC feather belt

Mexico's Jhonny Gonzalez stopped Tanzania's Rogers Mtagwa in the second round to retain his World Boxing Council featherweight title. Gonzalez, fighting on his 30th birthday, lived up to his reputation as a knock-out artist, improving to 50-7 with 44 victories inside the distance. After a first round in which the fighters felt each other out, Gonzalez let fly in the second, pursuing Mtagwa around the ring and rocking him with heavy blows to the head and body. Referee Jose Guadalupe Garcia waved it off at 2:15 of the second round to give Gonzalez the technical knock-out. Gonzalez's win is his second successful defence of the title he took from Japanese southpaw Hozumi Hasegawa in Japan in April, which he defended in July against Mexico's Tomas Villa. He won each time with a fourth-round stoppage. Gonzalez stretched his win streak to 10, with only one of those bouts going beyond the fourth round. He has not been stretched to the distance in a fight in almost four years. Mtagwa, who now fights out of Philadelphia, fell to 27-15 with two drawn and 19 knockouts. It was the 32-year-old's third successive defeat in a world title bout, after losses to Puerto Rico's Juan Manuel Lopez in 2009 and Cuba's Yuriorkis Gamboa last year