Boxing Challenge: Lipinets, Clayton battle to Majority Draw

   Saturday night's PBC card from Showtime didn't appear to be one of their more glamorous offerings from the premium cable network and while it lacked huge names and anything resembling what DAZN televised on Friday night, they still delivered a decent night from their Covid-19 home of Uncasville, Connecticut.

In the main event, welterweights Sergey Lipinets and late replacement Custio Clayton battled to a majority decision draw for an interim IBF belt that was planned so long ago that at that time, the organization didn't know the status of their champion Errol Spence and Spence will fight in early December against Danny Garcia.

Hopefully, the majority draw and Spence's return will take this belt out of play because one of the few things that the IBF ( and the WBO for the most part) does well is that they usually stay out of the multiple titles in the same division garbage that the WBA and WBC do so often with their "titles".

This one wasn't filled with action, but there was enough to follow that it wasn't a boring fight either and Clayton credit as he stepped up well as a late replacement and in his first test after an amateur career that saw him fight at the Olympic level.

I had Clayton a 115-113 winner as did one of the judges, but have no problems with the majority draw in such a close fight.

The two undercard bouts featured prospects from the Floyd Mayweather camp with the evening ending in a mixed bag for the Money Team.

Junior lightweight Xavier Martinez survived an eighth round that saw veteran Claudio Marrero knock him down twice to win a unanimous decision.

I haven't watched this fight yet in its entirety (was on the way to the road office), but reading the reports of others Martinez deserved the close nod despite the knockdowns from Marrero, who continues to be a stern test as a crossroads fighters in the 126 and now 130 pound divisions.

I did see the first fight with junior welterweight Subriel Matias rebounding from his first pro loss with a stoppage of a surprisingly meek Malik Hawkins when the doctor ended the fight one second into the seventh round.

Matias is the young bomber that knocked out Maxim Dadashev and Dadashev passed away from his injuries shortly after the fight.

Matias lost his next fight after that and I wondered if Matias may have been scarred by the tragedy entering this match with Hawkins, but Matias walked through Hawkins' punches, ignored his jab and broke Hawkins down with a stoppage seeming to be inevitable.

For Matias, the win returns him to fighter to watch status and for Hawkins, this uncompetitive loss combined with his last fight with Darwin Price, where he was on his way to a loss before a knee injury to Price gave Hawkins the duke, marks him as more suspect than prospect. 

In the boxing challenge, Ramon Malpica scored three points to my two to cut my lead further at 137-129.