Ashton “H2O” Sylve picked up a solid decision win over a still-game, still-tough veteran in Joseph “JoJo” Diaz tonight in Long Beach, Calif., headlining an MF Pro show on DAZN.
Sylve (14-1, 10 KO) scores his best win since his 2024 loss to Lucas Bahdi, and by quite a bit his best win since then, even considering Diaz (34-10-1, 15 KO) is well past his best. But no matter how many losses rack up, JoJo Diaz seems to refuse to lose the desire to be out there and fight to his absolute best.
We saw veteran
guys on this same show who have lost that desire — with respect to Juan Carlos Burgos, who put in his shifts over a long career. JoJo is not one of those. He was fighting hard in this one until the end, and he had some good rounds late. The second half of the fight was a lot better for him than the first.
What should be worrisome to the Sylve side is the second half for their, much younger guy, was a lot worse than the first. Sylve definitely saw his energy dip late, which is natural, but it was to a greater degree than Diaz. Maybe that’s conditioning, maybe it’s just wasting too much energy at times. But there were some troublesome moments for Sylve in the last few rounds, for sure, and JoJo did what he could to give himself a shot at the upset.
But Sylve passed the test here. It’s not the forever test, but this fight was about seeing how he’d respond to someone like Diaz; while not really an on-paper threat to win, Diaz, again, still fights hard. He’s a pro. He’s tough. He does not go away easily. And he gave Sylve the work needed in that regard.
Diaz can again be proud of his effort, even in defeat. And Sylve and his team should be able to look back at this fight and take a lot away from it — what was good, what can get better, and hopefully keep rebuilding the confidence and get him back on track. At 22, he can put the KO loss to Bahdi behind him and keep on working. There’s a lot of years left to go.
