Sunday, December 12, 2021

Boxing Challenge: Lomachenko dominates Commey

  I haven't been able to watch all of the fight cards from Saturday (there were five in total!), so I will be splitting the reviews into two parts.

On ESPN from Madison Square Garden, former three-division champion Vasyl Lomachenko tossed his hat into the Australian derby for the right to travel Down Under for the first shot at the recently crowned WBA.IBF, and WBO lightweight champion George Kambosos with a dominant unanimous decision over former IBF lightweight champion Richard Commey.

Lomachenko started and drove Commey into the ropes with a strong right hand late in the second round but gestured to Commey to come to the center of the ring rather than jump on the veteran.

In the seventh, Lomachenko scored the only knockdown of the fight with a left hook that almost ended the fight but after Commey beat the count Lomachencko spoke to Commey's corner and asked them to stop the fight.

Richard Commey might be the best-liked fighter in the game as Teofimo Lopez liked Commey so much that he attended Commey's return to the ring after Lopez's win over Commey and Lomachenko legitimately seemed concerned by Commey's condition in the seventh round.

Lomachenko didn't move into a full-blown slowdown after the seventh but he also didn't accelerate the pace in an effort to stop Commey either as the Ghanian gamely made to the final bell without much offense in the late rounds.

I scored Lomachenko an easy 118-109 winner (10-2 with a knockdown) which is in the ballpark of the official scores (119-108 x2 and 117-110) and after his second dominant win in a row after his loss to Teofimo Lopez, Lomachenko is ranked first by the WBC and WBO and has stated that he will travel to Australia to face George Kambosos if asked.

On DAZN, Matchroom placed the first name victim on the record of welterweight prospect Conor Benn as washed-up veteran Chris Algeri was taken out with one right hand near the end of the fourth round in Liverpool England.

Benn was dominating the fight before the knockout that ended the fight with Algeri out cold and without the referee even needing to count.

Algeri, who is still living off a dubious win over Ruslan Provodnikov almost eight years ago, was overmatched against Benn, and after a knockout like this one should return to retirement before he gets hurt.

As for Conor Benn, Matchroom is starting to be cornered a bit as Benn doesn't appear ready for the top ten level fighters but is too advanced for the journeymen and fringe contenders at this time.

On AXS, which is what used to be  HD-Net, the initial card from Richard Schaffer's Probellum debuted with a rough production start (early on no sound) with crude graphics and a less than stellar on-air group and that's before the problems with the in-ring product.

The day before the fight, WBO bantamweight champion John Riel Casimero pulled out of his mandatory title defense against Paul Butler with "Gastric Distress:,

Casimero claimed he went to the hospital and the WBO quickly stated that unless Casimero produced medical records, he would be stripped of the title.

Fortunately, 44-year-old former champion Joseph Agbeko who somehow is still ranked was on-site and ready to replace Casimero against Butler for the "Interim" title with the promise of being elevated to the full titleholder, should Casimero be stripped.

That lasted for a few hours before Butler pulled out of the fight refusing to face Agbeko.

In the Probellum main event, Sunny Edwards outboxed his mandatory challenger Jayson Mama to win a dominant unanimous decision to retain his IBF flyweight title.

Edwards scored a flash knockdown in the eighth round for the only knockdown and cruised to an easy win (119-108 on my card) over the confused Mama, who had no idea on how to deal with the slickness of Edwards.

In the boxing challenge, Ramon Malpica outscored me five to four on these fights, my lead is at 167-150.

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