The result means the Mexican side need only two wins in the second leg, which takes place tomorrow, to set up a meeting with the highly-fancied Cuba Domadores.

The Guerreros were in dominant form from the beginning and they got off to the best possible start when Joselito Velázquez Altamirano earned a unanimous victory over Rasul Saliev in the light flyweight division.

Altamirano was far too quick for Saliev on his way to claiming a dominant win that set the tone for what proved to be a superb evening for his side.

The Mexican outfit then doubled their advantage on the night as Sergio Alfredo Chirino Sánchez picked up his first win of the season as he beat debutant Yashar Magomedov in the bantamweight division.

In what was a hard-fought bout, Sánchez got the better of Magomedov with a unanimous victory, although the Azeri fighter did finish the fight with some credit as he took the final round.

The result of the overall contest was sealed in the third bout of the evening as Raúl Curiel García claimed another unanimous win for the Mexico Guerreros, which gave them an unassailable 3-0 lead, by beating Zaur Abdullayev.

Garcia, who has been in superb form throughout this year’s competition, dropped just one round in the match-up to ensure his team would go into tonight’s second leg with an advantage.

Abdullayev largely kept pace with the Guerreros fighter but Garcia managed to evade punches well, counter-attacking at will which proved too hot for the Baku Fires athlete to handle.

Despite a torrid opening to the evening, the hosts did pull one back to keep themselves in with a narrow chance of progressing to the semi-finals when middleweight Jaba Khositashvili outfought Misael Uriel Rodríguez Oliva.

The contest itself was thrilling, providing the spectators with arguably the most intriguing bout of the first leg as neither fighter strayed from the middle of the ring.

They both traded constant blows but it was Jaba Khositashvili who impressed the judges most, taking the match by virtue of a unanimous decision.

His win was to be a mere fleeting moment of success for the Baku Fires however as normal service was resumed in the heavyweight bout, where Julio Cesar Castillo Torres beat Leonid Charnabayeu to round-off an emphatic night for the Mexico Guerreros.

The comprehensive nature of the scoreline may have come as a surprise to many after the Mexican outfit finished third in Group A of the regular season, while the Azerbaijan Baku Fires came second in Group B.

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