Brian Viloria’s third — and most impressive — world title reign is over.
Juan Francisco Estrada brought it to a sudden end on Saturday in Macau, China, winning a split decision to take Viloria’s WBO and WBA flyweight titles at the Cotai Arena.
Viloria’s first fight on the HBO network ended with his fourth professional loss and first in more than three years.
Two judges scored the fight 117-111 and 116-111 in favor of Estrada, while the third had it 115-113 for Viloria.
The Star-Advertiser scored the fight 116-112 for Estrada, who is now 23-2, with 17 knockouts.
Viloria (32-4, 19 KOs) controlled the early portion of the fight with power punches, finding a home for his straight right hand down the pipe against Estrada, who suffered an early cut over his eye.
By the seventh round, Estrada was bleeding from the nose.
The 22-year-old from Mexico dominated the later rounds as Viloria slowed down in the second half of the fight.
Estrada landed the better exchanges, and by the final three rounds, he was punishing the 32-year-old Viloria.
Viloria began to swell under his right eye in the eighth round and it turned purple by the end of the fight.
Viloria dropped to 8-4 in world title fights and lost for the first time since the only TKO defeat of his career in January 2010.
After the fight, Viloria wrote on his Twitter page: "Tough pill to swallow, but my hats off to Estrada for a great fight. He earned it tonight. Time to rest and hopefully we can go at it again."
A rematch is possible, but flyweight Milan Melindo, who won via a fourth-round TKO earlier on the card, is the WBO’s No. 1 contender for the title.
Viloria hadn’t gone a full 12 rounds since beating Julio Cesar Miranda for the WBO belt at the Blaisdell Arena in July 2011.
He unified the WBO and WBA titles with a 10th-round TKO of Hernan Marquez last November.
