Giovani Santillan claimed a far more convincing win than in his previous trip to Las Vegas.

The unbeaten welterweight prospect from San Diego was forced to work hard but still managed to prevail in a well-earned eight-round unanimous decision win over Baltimore’s Cecil McCalla. Judges Eric Cheek (80-72), John McKaie (78-74) and Steve Weisfeld (79-73) all ruled in favor of Santillan in their ESPN+ aired bout Saturday evening at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas.

The bout came more than a year after Santillan (27-0, 15KOs) was considered fortunate to have escaped with a victory over Antonio DeMarco last June at the MGM Grand Conference Center in Las Vegas. The welterweight southpaw prevailed by majority decision in a fight many—including Hall of Fame former two-division champ and current ESPN analyst Tim Bradely—felt should have landed in favor of DeMarco.

The criticism was well-received by Santillan, who relocated his training camp to Riverside, California where he connected with renowned cornerman Robert Garcia. The union proved to be a hit, with Santillan taking an aggressive approach to McCalla, a good Samaritan who works with outpatients in helping them move past drug addiction to live productive lives. The durable southpaw gave almost as good as he got throughout the bout, though with Santillan landing the cleaner punches at a higher rate. The 29-year-old connected on 146-of-357 total punches (41%), compared to McCalla who was more active but less accurate in landing 102-of-383 punches (27%).

Santillan was on point statistically, though still susceptible to straight right hands upstairs. McCalla enjoyed more success in the second half of the fight, though Santillan showed far improved conditioning from the DeMarco fight in closing strong to maintain his perfect pro record.

McCalla falls to 23-5 (10KOs), snapping a two-fight win streak.

The bout served on the preliminary undercard preceding a lightweight clash between former three-division champ Vasiliy Lomachenko (14-2, 10KOs) and rising contender Masayoshi Nakatani (19-1, 13KOs).

Jake Donovan is a senior writer for BoxingScene.com. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox