Rosado falls to Quillin on TKO

ATLANTIC CITY - Gabriel Rosado backed himself into his corner as the Boardwalk Hall crowd began to boo.

Blood was trickling out of his left eye, and a ringside doctor was called by referee Allen Huggins to look at the North Philadelphian after the ninth round. The doctor shook his head, Huggins waved off the fight, and Rosado was left stunned as Peter Quillin dropped to his knees to celebrate retaining the WBO middleweight championship on a technical knockout.

"I felt like that was B.S.," said Rosado, who got 12 stitches after the fight in his dressing room. "This is a championship fight."

In the eighth round, Rosado had pressed Quillin before blocking the champion's hook with his raised gloves. He shook his head and shrugged. Quillin would need to find another way to hurt Rosado. A round later, Quillin's jab opened the cut.

Rosado stood up from his stool before the fourth round and began to ask the crowd for more noise. He taunted the champ by briefly fighting with his hand behind his back and then spun his right hand in a circle as the fighters sized each other up. He began to fight aggressively, create action - and, most important, avoid Quillin's left hand.

"They knew he was getting hurt when they stopped it," Rosado said.

He carried the aggression with him, controlling the fifth, sixth, and seventh rounds by using his jab to force Quillin backward before targeting the hook. In the sixth round, Rosado walked into an uppercut and appeared to slow down, albeit briefly. Rosado bounced back to end the round with Quillin's back in the ropes.

Rosado backed into Quillin's corner midway through the second round, and the champ caught him with a quick left hook. Rosado dropped to a knee before quickly getting back up.

Quillin cracked Rosado with a left hook in the opening seconds, but missed wildly when he tried to get back with it in the closing moments of the first round.

"I deserve a rematch - this is the story of my life," Rosado said. "I'm the real Rocky Balboa."

On the undercard, heavyweight prospect Deontay Wilder knocked down Nikolai Firtha twice and bloodied his mouth in the first round before finishing him off in the fourth round with a thumping right hand. The undefeated 28-year-old from Alabama has won all 30 of his fights by knockout.