Saturday afternoon from Matchroom/DAZN saw Hollywood, Florida as the site for Demetrius Andrade's successful defense of his WBO middleweight title.
Andrade won a clear unanimous decision and knocked Williams down in the second round with a straight left, but Williams did have his moments and the fight was more exciting than the usual lopsided Andrade fight.
I scored Andrade a 117-109 winner (9-3 with the knockdown).
Andrade was hit occasionally by Williams and showed enough vulnerability that you would think any of the other three champions (WBC Jermall Charlo, WBA Ryota Murata, and IBF Gennady Golovkin) would be interested in a unification fight more than perhaps in the past.
I doubt it, but perhaps.
Andrade now has his mandatory out of the way for the year, but I (and Andrade with promoter Eddie Hearn) have next to no idea on Andrade's next defense unless the unlikely event that the three mentioned champions decides Andrade is suddenly worth the risk.
In the co-feature, undefeated super middleweight Carlos Gongora dominated Christopher Pearson and won every round through seven and finished Pearson off in the eighth.
Pearson appeared as if he could have risen, but took the ten count as he had clearly had enough of Gongora for the evening.
I'd like to see Gongora against a better challenger and he would make a very interesting fight for quite a few of the contenders in the division.
In the main event on Fox, former WBC junior middleweight champion Tony Harrison was rocked early by Bryant Perrella and outworked over most of the twelve-round fight by Perrella, who moved up in weight for this fight.
Harrison seemed a bit listless in his first fight since losing to Jermell Charlo and didn't move his hands enough, which likely cost him the fight as when Harrison picked up the pace he was effective against Perrella.
Harrison was fortunate to escape with a draw in a difficult bout to score.
I thought Perrella shaded it 115-113, but the Perrella judge scored 117-111 ( too wide), the Harrison judge scored 116-112 ( too wide), and the final judge scored 114-114, which seemed fair.
And then there was Twiller.
Peter Kahn (Twiller's chief boxing officer) has been all over the boxing podcast circuit with several respected members of the boxing media over the last two weeks talking about what Twiller is going to bring to boxing.
While I'm all for more attention and more exposure to the sport, I'm not sure that attention and exposure of a positive nature are coming anytime soon for what was essentially a freak show last night from Atlanta.
I'll be writing more later in the week about a pay per view card that seemed to be straight from a carnival that included YouTube star Jake Paul vs MMA fighter Ben Askren, former UFC heavyweight champion Frank Mir boxing against former IBF cruiserweight champion Steve Cunningham, lots of musicians and comedians, Ric Flair officiating a "Slap Fight" with Saturday Night Live's Pete Davidson, about ten people commentating on the matches that ranged from a bemused Al Bernstein to a clearly inebriated (TONS of Marijuana references and use on this show) Oscar De La Hoya and Snoop Dog, and all of this looked like it was filmed in an abandoned warehouse with lousy lighting.
With all of that said, they may do strong numbers and I am anxious to see how well they do in PPV buys.
If they are successful, full credit to them because they are finding an audience that boxing clearly isn't getting without them.
However, is it sustainable and how many times can you play the card of gimmick shows before people tune out?
I don't have the answer to that question.
In the only real boxing match that mattered, former WBA junior welterweight Regis Prograis won the first five rounds in controlling veteran Ivan Redkach before round six when Redkach was hit with what was ruled a low blow, sold the injury like he was Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat, and was unable to continue.
The reaction on Twitter was mixed with most people stating that Redkach wasn't even hit with a punch at all or if so it was a glancing shot.
Others thought that Redkach had been smashed in the kidneys and the result was believable.
In any case, Redkach was carried out on a stretcher, while I waited for a wrestler to come out of nowhere and overturn the stretcher as happened so often in pro wrestling of days past, and the fight moved to the scorecards with Prograis winning the justified unanimous decision.
What a trainwreck.
In the boxing challenge, Ramon Malpica and I each scored five points on the day, which moves the total to 50-46 on the year.
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