Mexico City’s Salas landed various power punches on Saracho and eventually left referee Robert Hoyle with little choice but to stop their one-sided welterweight fight on the Jai Opetaia-Brandon Glanton undercard in Las Vegas. Hoyle halted the action at 2:05 of the eighth round of a Zuffa Boxing co-feature Paramount+ streamed from Meta Apex, UFC’s performance complex.

Salas, 27, improved to 23-2-2 and recorded his 17th knockout. Guadalajara’s Saracho (16-3-2, 12 KOs) lost by knockout for the second time in his six-year career.

“It was a tough fight,” Salas told Max Kellerman during his post-fight interview. “The fight had just started, but I listened to my corner, the work was being put in and we were able to come out with our hand raised.”

An aggressive, sharp Salas picked apart Saracho during the seventh and eighth rounds. Hoyle looked closely early in the eighth round, and he saw enough resistance until a left-right combination knocked Saracho off-balance and into the ropes.

Saracho didn’t protest when Hoyle stepped between them to stop it.

A right hand by Salas staggered Saracho a little less than a minute into the sixth round. Bleeding from his nose, Saracho moved away from Salas, who kept pressing the action and landed various hard shots until the sixth ended.

Salas caught Saracho with a right hand that stunned him and knocked him backward about 35 seconds into the fourth round. Four more punches from Salas landed soon thereafter and made Saracho retreat, but he regained his senses to stop that momentum.

Salas caught Saracho with two hard right hands in the final 10 seconds of the second round, but he wasn’t hurt.

Pablo Rubio demonstrated tremendous resolve by getting up from two knockdowns in the third round to beat Adan Palma by unanimous decision in an entertaining, eight-round battle between undefeated featherweights.

Judges Robert Byrd (77-73), Eric Cheek (77-73) and David Sutherland (78-74) all scored for Rubio (15-0, 5 KOs), who fought for just the third time in the past 6½ years in the opener of the main card on Paramount+.

Other than the nearly disastrous third round, the taller, rangier Rubio, of Whittier, California, often pressed the action and was the sharper fighter. He never appeared to hurt San Diego's Palma (14-1, 9 KOs), but made him mindful of exchanging.

“I had to do what I had to do,” Rubio told Kellerman during his post-fight interview. “I had to get up off the ground. I had to keep fighting. And Palma’s a tough dude. He’s the only one I been cracked with like that and you gotta give it up to him. He came here to fight. And I appreciate that. He [was] an undefeated fighter. … We both didn’t want to lose, but it is what it is. This is how you make great fights.”

Palma hammered away with left hooks in the final round, but he couldn’t hurt Rubio again. He seemed surprised by the result after ring announcer Joe Martinez read the scores.

Rubio was the one who was surprised in the third round.

Palma rocked him with a left hook about 45 seconds into the third round. He drilled Rubio with another left hook in a subsequent exchange and lunged to land a third clean left hook that sent him to his knees 10 seconds later.

Rubio beat the count, but Palma’s right sent him to the canvas again with 1:09 to go. Rubio recovered well enough from the first two knockdowns of his career to reach the fourth round and regained control.