Austin Trout knocks out Joey Hernandez in the sixth round

Austin Trout’s body blows made the difference against Joey Hernandez on Tuesday night in the Premier Boxing Champions event at the Hollywood Palladium.

Trout knocked out Hernandez at the end of the sixth round in the super-welterweight bout.

Trout, a former world champion at 154 pounds, finished off the flashier Hernandez with three consecutive body shots — a right and two lefts that made Hernandez crumple to the mat on his knees.

He was unable to get up, getting counted out by referee Jack Reiss.

“If you looked at his body language, it looked like he was ready to be done,� said Trout, who improved to 30-2 with 17 knockouts. “In the third round, there was no confidence left in his eyes.�

Hernandez (24-4-1) either lost his composure or went into a rage when he flipped Trout and body-slammed him onto the mat in the fourth round.

Reiss pulled Hernandez to a corner, talked to the boxer sternly and then took one point away for his action.

Trout said that was the first time he had ever been body-slammed in the ring.

“But he just made my confidence soar,� Trout said. “I was thinking, ‘He’s getting desperate.’ He was hoping I got hurt with the body slam and he’d have an excuse to get out of there. But that’s not the case. It takes more than a little punk slam.�

The fighters began to heat up in the third, getting the crowd into the fight when they began exchanging blows throughout the round.

But it was the body punches that stopped Hernandez’s night.

“I was trying to catch him,� Hernandez said. “He wasn’t hurting me until the body shot that ended it.�

The first fight of the night, between junior-featherweights Jorge Lara and Jesus Rojas, was stopped at the end of the sixth round because of an accidental head-butt.

After going to the scorecards, the fight was called a technical draw when the three judges scored it 57-57.

Lara, who had entered the fight undefeated at 27-0-1 with 19 knockouts, wasn’t happy with the decision, stalking Rojas after the fight, his fans booing lustily.

The fight came into question after the referee looked at Lara while he was sitting on his stool at the end of the sixth round, blood running down his face from cuts on both eyes.

Lara had complained to the referee about head-butts several times in the third round by Rojas, one of the times leading to a cut right eye that drew blood. In the fifth round, Lara suffered a cut left eye, the blood flowing down his entire face.

“I’m very upset with the way this went,� Lara said. “Rojas is a dirty fighter. … My eye just kept getting worse and worse as the fight went on. There was no way I could continue.�

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