Diego Pacheco Stays Unbeaten With Decision Win Over Steven Nelson

Diego Pacheco defeated a game Steven Nelson to retain his two belts.
Diego Pacheco (white trunks) and Enrique Collazo (green trunks) box during their boxing bout at T-Mobile Arena.
Diego Pacheco (white trunks) and Enrique Collazo (green trunks) box during their boxing bout at T-Mobile Arena. / Joe Camporeale-Imagn Images

Diego Pacheco withstood a late rally from Steven Nelson to remain undefeated and win by unanimous decision at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas on Saturday night.

With the win, Pacheco improved to 23-0 with 18 knockouts and retained the US WBC and WBO international belts. For Nelson, the loss to Pacheco was the first of his career, as he's now 20-1 with 16 knockouts.

Pacheco landed 132 of his 464 punches (28.4 percent) and Nelson landed 77 of 560 punches (14.8 percent), per CompuBox.

All three judges scored the bout 117-111 for Pacheco.

Nelson got off to a strong start in the first three-plus rounds, using his feints and pressure to dictate the pace of the fight and seemingly get out to an early lead. The tide turned with over a minute left in the fourth round when Pacheco caught Nelson with a big right hand that cut him on the outside of his left eye. The bleeding persisted outside of Nelson's eye for the duration of the fight.

From the moment Pacheco landed the straight right hand, he was in control throughout, landing big straight right hands, left hooks and uppercuts against Nelson. Pacheco did his most damage in the 10th round, seemingly landing power shots which appeared to hurt Nelson or have him close to getting dropped.

Nelson, 36, who is a stablemate of pound-for-pound great and WBA junior middleweight champion Terence Crawford, withstood the onslaught from Pacheco and had his best rounds in the second half of the fight in the 11th and 12th rounds. Nelson's pressure and ability to get on the inside helped him find the success he had early in the fight, including landing a pair of big left hooks in the final round.

Pacheco, 23, was ranked in the top six by three of the four major sanctioning bodies, including No. 1 by the WBO. With the win, he could be in line to become a mandatory or fight to become the No. 1 contender for one of the four major belts.

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Nathaniel Marrero
NATHANIEL MARRERO

Nathaniel Marrero is a writer for the Boxing, Pittsburgh Pirates and Baltimore Ravens On SI sites. He's also written for the Orlando Sentinel and MLB.com, and was a part of UCF's sports show, Hitting The Field. He attended UCF and graduated with a bachelor's degree in journalism in 2023. Twitter/X: Nate_Marrero