DAZN and Golden Boy kicked their 2020 off from San Antonio, Texas with a surprisingly interesting battle as former WBO junior middleweight champion Jaime Munguia defeated Gary "Spike" O'Sullivan via an eleventh round stoppage when O'Sullivan's corner conceded the fight with their man being pounded along the ropes.
Munguia threw more punches and was ahead on my scorecards after ten rounds (97-92) before ending the fight in the eleventh as he pasted O'Sullivan to earn the stoppage.
Munguia threw several low blows throughout the bout and was deducted a point in the sixth round for a low shot, which I thought contributed to wearing down the smaller "Spike" in the final few rounds of the fight.
Munguia continues to be a rough draft as a fighter and where his work with trainer Erik Morales impressed me came into play was in the middle rounds as Munguia began to use the jab more effectively.
The jab not only helped the Munguia offense, but it improved the defense as well as it ended the counter rights that O'Sullivan landed far more than he should have in the first half of the fight.
Munguia is the top contender for WBO middleweight champion Demetrius Andrade's title, due to the WBO's rule that moves a champion of theirs that vacates their title to move up or down in weight will automatically move to the top of the contender list.
Munguia still seems too unpolished to defeat Andrade and might be better suited to delay that fight for a bit and put another one or two fights at middleweights into the record books before making that challenge.
As for Spike, he took a lot of punches in the loss and he's undersized as a middleweight, to begin with.
O'Sullivan might be on the verge of considering retirement as he has been hit a lot, but if he decides to fight on, his management might be smart to consider trying him in the junior middleweight division where physically he is a better fit.
The ESPN/Top Rank slate led off their 2020 with a crossroads light heavyweight fight between Jesse Hart and Joe Smith with the victor possibly involved for the WBO title vacated recently by Canelo Alvarez or an eliminator against the winner of a 175 pound next week from ESPN with former WBO champion Eleider Alvarez and Michael Seals.
I saw it as a toss of the coin matchup with Hart throwing more punches and being the smoother boxer and Smith being the harder puncher and having the better chin with the possible variable that Smith just hasn't thrown enough punches in recent losses to Sullivan Barrera and WBA champion Dmitry Bivol.
Smith turned back the clock to his peak years when he knocked out Andrej Fonfara and Bernard Hopkins and simply overpowered Hart with punishing blows and in a surprise moved his hands enough to outland Hart.
Hart was dropped by Smith very late in the seventh round and was hurt badly again in the ninth round, but managed to grab and hold enough to make it to the final bell.
I had Smith a decisive 98-91 winner, which was in line with two judges scores, but the verdict for Smith was split as judge James Kinney threw out a Hamburglar of a scorecard that awarded his scorecard 95-94 for Hart, which not only was outrageous to fans, it was outrageous to Hart promoter Bob Arum.
That's how bad this scorecard was- the promoter of the losing fighter was railing against his fighter's winning scorecard!
The impressive return for Smith will likely see him face the aforementioned Alvarez-Seals battle next Saturday while Hart should remain on the fringes of the title picture and would be a viable opponent against top ten boxers in the division.
The Boxing Challenge starts again for 2020 as Ramon Malpica attempts to take the trophy away from me for another time.
Ramon won the first challenge, but I've been fortunate enough to emerge victoriously in the following five seasons.
Ramon and I each earned one point for the knockout win by Jaime Munguia.
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