Sunday, December 3, 2017

Boxing Challenge: Ali upsets Cotto

The Boxing Challenge continued in Madison Square Garden as the supposed goodbye to Miguel Cotto ended badly for Cotto and his fans as heavy underdog Sadam Ali moved up from welterweight to stun Cotto and lift his WBO junior middleweight title via a close but unanimous decision.
Ali was the quicker fighter but surprisingly was the harder puncher as he hurt Cotto in the second round and won the final four rounds on my card, which had Ali as a 115-113 winner.
Cotto injured his biceps in the seventh round and that may have cost him the fight, but clearly, Cotto is getting out at the right time and I would hope to see him stick to his retirement claim.
As for Ali, I'm not sure how he stacks up against the other top 154 pounders and I would rank him fourth among the four champions at junior middleweight.

In the co-feature, the less said the better as Rey Vargas won every round on my card and won a unanimous decision over Oscar Negrete, whose best move was to use headbutts from the Tony Atlas school, to retain his WBC junior featherweight title via unanimous decision.
HBO's fights have slipped off late and this fight is a prime example of this.

Ramon Malpica and I each added two points for the Vargas win and none for Ali's upset of Cotto.
The Challenge is now 185-169.

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