Monday, November 19, 2018

Boxing Challenge: Miller walks through Dinu

A Matchroom card televised by DAZN managed to kill a Saturday (or in my case Saturday and Sunday before I watched the entire card) with various bouts of interest and three in the boxing challenge from the boxing hotbed of Mulvane, Kansas.

The main event saw Jarrell "Big Baby" Miller win a minor heavyweight title with a fourth-round knockout of Bogdan Dinu.
Miller weighed in at over 300 pounds and Dinu looked strong enough by winning the first two rounds.
Miller picked up the pace in the third before finishing him in the fourth round after two knockdowns.
Miller could be the spring opponent for three title holding champion Anthony Joshua, who is also promoted by Matchroom, but even if not then Miller will eventually receive that shot with the minor title that he won in Mulvane.
Miller makes me think of so many of the beefy 1980's heavyweights such as Greg Page, Tony Tubbs, Michael Dokes etc that possessed world-class abilities and the appetite to go with it that made them capable of the occasional brilliant performance yet so often were maddeningly inconsistent.
Hopefully, Miller can win his battle with the fork and make the best of his chances.

Going into the evening, I believed that the best fight of the night would be the grudge middleweight fight between Gabriel Rosado and Luis Arias, but the surprise of the night was the absolute war (which is an often overused term in boxing, but it fits here) between Brandon Rios and Ramon Alvarez, the brother of Canelo in a junior middleweight contest that saw plenty of punches thrown and plenty caught by each fighter as Rios wore down Alvarez and stopped him in round nine.
I have nominated Rios for a "Zabbie" (Fighter that I wish would go retire) plenty in the past and even in this win as a junior middleweight, I still think that would be a good idea.
However, if matched properly and preferably at welterweight, Rios can still have some fun fights to watch, but not at anyone resembling a current contender and especially one at junior middle.
That will not be how it turns out though as Rios still is a name, he'll face someone he shouldn't and he is very likely to take a bad beating.

The Rosado-Arias bout had what looked like a sure-fire ingredient for the best fight, bad blood, a side bet between the fighters of ten thousand dollars, what seemed to be a motivated Luis Arias, who looked dreadful against Daniel Jacobs and you had Gabe Rosado, who always makes interesting, if not always competitive battles before his face would fall apart and let him down.
This time Rosado used a new game plan for him that saw him be less entertaining, but longer lasting as the normally cut prone Rosado wasn't bothered by cuts at all.
The problem was on my card, where Rosado's new style cost him the first rounds before his usual late charge against Arias.
The final card saw a draw with one judge scoring the fight for each fighter and the third had the scores even.
I had Arias a close 96-94 winner, but if the fight had been a twelve rounder, I think Rosado would have gotten the nod.
The winner could have been next for WBO champion Demetrius Andrade, although I don't think either would be deserving or overly competitive in a prospective fight.
The talk was of a rematch, where perhaps both camps could double down on their wager and bet $20,000 on the outcome.

Non-Boxing challenge fights on the slate was another ladies title fight and Olympic bronze medalist Nico Hernandez, who won a less than fascinating unanimous decision in his eight rounder.
Hernandez is going to have to show a little more pop in his mitts if he wants to draw attract American fans to his normally internationally dominated division.

In the boxing challenge, Ramon Malpica scored four points (Three for Jarrell Miller and one for Brandon Rios) to my two (One per Miller and Rios) to cut my lead to 190-169.




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