Wilder stops Price with huge right in third round

LOS ANGELES – Six-foot-7 heavyweight Deontay Wilder isn’t going to win any style points for his boxing skills. Can he punch, though.

Wilder, a bronze medal winner in the 2008 Olympics, spent a few rounds trying in vain to hit opponent Kelvin Price cleanly on the Amir Khan-Carlos Molina undercard Saturday at the L.A. Sports Arena. And then, less than a minute into the third, he ended the fight in an instant with an overhand right to the chin.

Price almost went through the ropes and then landed his back, clearly a finished fighter. The official time was :51 in Round 3.

Wilder (26-0, 26 knockouts) has never gone farther than the fourth round. Price (13-1, 6 KOs) came into the fight undefeated.

“You have to be patient,” Wilder said. “… You know it’s gonna come. You just have to be patient because when it comes, it’s gonna work.”

Also on the Khan-Molina card, Alfredo Angulo defeated Jorge Silva by a hard-fought unanimous decision – his second consecutive victory since returning to boxing after a two-year hiatus.

Angulo (22-2, 19 knockouts) took some heavy blows from his fellow Mexican, appearing to have been stunned a few times, but kept the pressure on Silva (18-3-2, 14 KOs) and clearly outworked him. Silva, only 20, took many punishing shots but was never seriously hurt.

All three judges scored it 97-93.

“I asked for a (opponent) tonight who would give me work so I could see where I really was after a two-year layoff,” Angulo said. “… He took a lot of shots. I thought I could knock him out in the seventh or eighth rounds but he went into survival mode.”

And in a spirited 10-round welterweight fight, veteran Julio Diaz (40-7-1, 29 KOs) scored something akin to an upset when he drew with Shawn Porter (20-0-1, 14 KOs).

Porter, 25, is a rising fringe contender. Diaz, a former lightweight titleholder was only 6-4 in his previous 10 fights. He’s 32.