The manager of Edwin De Los Santos has filed a formal appeal following his fighter’s second-round knockout loss to Jose Valenzuela at Sunday’s Zuffa Boxing card, seeking to have the result overturned to a no-contest on the grounds that Valenzuela landed a punch while De Los Santos was on the canvas.
The appeal centers on a sequence late in the second round in which Valenzuela dropped De Los Santos with a right hand. As De Los Santos sank slowly to a knee, Valenzuela appeared to connect with an additional left hand before the fighter was fully protected by the count. Referee Thomas Taylor counted De Los Santos out, and the fight was ruled a second-round knockout for Valenzuela.
The legal argument behind the appeal
De Los Santos’ manager has argued that the sequence clearly violated one of boxing’s most fundamental rules, the prohibition on striking an opponent who has taken a knee or is otherwise considered down. The manager’s position is that the illegality of the punch is independent of how significant the blow was or where it landed, and that the rule exists precisely to give fighters an opportunity to recover from knockdowns rather than be finished by shots thrown in violation of the count.
He cited what he described as a precedent from the first fight between the two men in 2022, which De Los Santos won by third-round knockout. In that bout, De Los Santos was penalized and had a point deducted for hitting Valenzuela while Valenzuela was down, establishing that the same rule had been actively enforced in that specific matchup. The symmetry of that precedent, he argued, strengthens the case that the same standard should apply here.
The broader argument in the appeal extended beyond the individual fight to a structural concern about the sport’s enforcement of its own rules, suggesting that if a major boxing commission determines that an illegal punch has no bearing on the result of a fight, that conclusion creates a problematic precedent for fighter safety across the sport.
What De Los Santos said about the fight
De Los Santos himself offered a more measured perspective on the incident than his manager, acknowledging that Valenzuela landed a clean shot and that he was affected by it, while also expressing confidence that the punch had stunned rather than finished him. He stated that he intends to let the appeal proceed through proper channels without making it the focus of his thinking, and signaled that a third fight with Valenzuela is his primary objective regardless of how the appeal resolves.
His willingness to acknowledge being hurt by a legal punch while contesting the outcome through the illegal blow framework reflects the complicated position fighters occupy when appealing results. Admitting the clean knockdown undermines any suggestion that the outcome was solely a product of the alleged foul, but the manager’s appeal does not require De Los Santos to have been unaffected, only that the illegal blow denied him the opportunity to recover that the rules are designed to protect.
The path forward
The appeal will be evaluated by the appropriate boxing commission for the jurisdiction in which the fight took place. Commission decisions on appeals involving alleged fouls can result in the original result standing, a finding of no-contest, or other remedies depending on the evidence reviewed and the specific rule violations alleged.
Whatever the commission decides, the competitive appetite for a third fight between De Los Santos and Valenzuela appears to exist on De Los Santos’ side. The original fight, the rematch, and now an appeal process have created a rivalry with genuine stakes for both fighters heading into whatever comes next.
