Zuffa Boxing 13 results, highlights: Carlos Adames picks up win over Gerome Warburton in promotional debut

WBC middleweight champion Carlos Adames took a trip up to the super middleweight division in the main event of Saturday's Zuffa Boxing 13. Adames picked up a win over Gerome Warburton, earning a clear decision victory over an opponent who rarely seemed interested in providing any offensive resistance.

The fight was anything but exciting in the opening rounds, with both Adames and Warburton doing more staring and posturing than punching. If the idea was that Adames would immediately bring the fight to Warburton, making the more unknown commodity feel as though he was entering a level he was not ready for, Adames seemed hesitant to put that idea into action.

Adames started to turn up the pressure slightly by the third round, and even more around the fifth. Warburton was content to circle around the perimeter of the ring, largely at the insistance of his corner than he "continue boxing," but that allowed Adames, even in slow rounds, to appear to be in control by simply being willing to engage.

Adames kept a strong focus on Warburton's body, likely knowing the only time Warburton had been stopped was due to a relentless body attack by Kieron Conway. A big hook to the body from Adames in the seventh round seemed to freeze Warburton, an effect of the body work adding up round after round.

In the moments where Warburton felt confident enough to throw punches, he had brief moments of success, but those times were rare as he spent more time moving and reacting than sitting down and letting his hands go.

Warburton's confidence issues were on display between rounds, as he asked his corner if he'd won even a single round. By the end of the ninth round, Warburton was spending the final stretch of the round actively disengaging from the fight before talking to Adames after the bell. The juxtaposition of action between the bells was odd for Warburton, who was being given the biggest opportunity of his career, even if a world title wasn't on the line.

Warburton managed to survive the final round, achieving something of a moral victory that he'd gone the distance with the best middleweight in the game, even going as far as to celebrate on the ropes and dance after the final bell despite likely having lost every round. If it was a moral victory for Warburton, it was a moral victory the larger boxing world will likely not respect or remember.

At the end of 10 rounds, the final scorecards read 100-90, 99-91, 98-92, all for Adames.

"I think he was just in the ring to survive, he wasn't really here to win the fight," Adames said after the fight. "He could have done more, but he wasn't really a match. I think he could of done more but I think he was just surviving."

For Adames, Saturday will not go down as one of his most memorable trips to the ring, but a win is a win and Adames avoided a significant stumble, even outside of his middleweight home. Now, he can turn his attention back to establishing himself as the best middleweight in the world.

"I could say I could fight whoever I want," Adames said. "But the real question is who wants to fight Carlos Adames?"