Boxing Challenge-Briedis outpoints Perez

The World Boxing Super Series featured the only bout of the weekend in the boxing challenge as WBC Cruiserweight champion Mairis Briedis retained his title with a tedious unanimous decision over Mike Perez in the first-ever title fight in Briedis' home country of Latvia.

With the victory, Briedis not only kept his WBC title, he also moved on in the WBSS tournament to the semi-finals, where he will face the tournament's top seed in WBO kingpin Oleksandr Usyk in what will also be a unification battle.
I still cannot figure out why the tournament top seed faces the 3rd seed, not the 4th in the semi's, but  I suppose they have their reasons.

In any event, Usyk-Briedis won't have much to live up to compared to this bout as far as action goes, because this fight didn't have much of it.
I questioned the inclusion of Mike Perez, to begin with, his selection over Kryzstof Glowacki (Glowacki won his fight on the undercard) and Perez lived down to expectations as his most effective sequence over the twelve rounds was his headbutt that busted Briedis open in round three.
Briedis rocked Perez with a hard right uppercut in round seven, but other than that, the fight lacked a lot of drama or action.
I scored the fight for Briedis 116-109,9-3 in rounds with Perez losing a point for his third round headbutt and Briedis dropping a point for holding in the tenth.

This was the first fight for the WBSS with an American network as the Audience network, which is mainly seen on Directv, and it was disappointing to me.
First, because of the network feed of Big Sky football, the fight was shown on delay, so most fans knew the result of the fight before it happened.
Add to that, the fight wasn't streamed live as the first three fights had been and there wasn't a lot of reasons to check out the least attractive matchup of the first round.
On the television side, the graphics are just way too small and the issues with the fuzzy screen haven't disappeared.
I still say that it's because of those lights that look so good during the pre-match proceedings, but adds a haziness when the fight starts.

Ramon Malpica and I added one point for the Briedis win in the boxing challenge.
I lead 135-123.

I hope to have a Buckeye review of their squash match over Rutgers before the Browns start against the Bengals.