Avanesyan won the first two rounds on my scorecard and like Egid Kavaliauskas a few years ago against Crawford, had some success with backing Crawford up and making him give ground.
However, the class and skills of the champion began to show as the fight moved forward.
Avanesyan had occasional bursts of offense, it was clear that Crawford was setting the challenger up for the finish, and in the sixth round, the trap snapped shut.
While Avanesyan isn't an elite welterweight, he is a solid back end of the top ten contender and it was impressive to see Crawford finish him so quickly and smoothly.
Now as usual the talk returns of Crawford against Errol Spence as it always does after either unbeaten champion dispatches their latest challenger and the only fight that really matters in the welterweight division ( although I'd be okay with Jaron Ennis against either!) continues in boxing limbo.
Supposedly, both parties are optimistic but both were this year and it didn't happen, so with Errol Spence now scheduled to face Keith "One Time Every Three Years" Thurman, it could be summer at the earliest for the superfight to happen.
Oh, Boxing...
ESPN and Top Rank pushed another Heisman evening appearance from New York for former lightweight champion Teofimo Lopez, who had been spectacular in his previous Heisman night fights on the network, including his second-round KO of Richard Commey to win his first world title.
Lopez doesn't resemble that punishing fighter anymore let alone the one that stunned the world with his upset of Vasyl Lomachenko and he looked very average against Sandor Martin, who took the fight on three weeks' notice to replace Jose Pedraza and on my scorecard did enough to upset Lopez as he did Mikey Garcia last year.
However, despite Martin knocking Lopez down in the second round ( and scoring another knockdown later that was scored a slip), Lopez managed to win a controversial split decision victory that boxing observers are wondering if Lopez's best was left in the ring against Vasyl Lomachenko.
The fight was close (I had Martin ahead 95-94) and I could see Lopez as a winner by the same score but the judges saw Lopez as the winner by tallies of 96-93 and an incredibly terrible 97-92 to override the 95-94 card for Martin.
As in his loss to George Kambosos, who also dropped Lopez, Lopez wades in recklessly against fighters that he expects to overwhelm and gets knocked down by counter right hands that don't hurt him but knock him off-balance and to the floor.
Lopez has been mentioned as a possible opponent for WBO champion Josh Taylor, should he win his rematch with Jack Catterall, or WBC king Regis Prograis but from what I saw against Sandor Martin, I think he would be a deserved underdog against either champion.
As for Martin, this is the second big performance from the Spaniard against a big-name opponent that was expected to overwhelm him, and perhaps it's time to give Martin some credit as a solid contender.
One fighter that did his job to impress was undefeated heavyweight prospect Jared Anderson, who in his first ten-round fight, took out the usually durable Jerry Forrest in only two rounds.
Forrest did land some counter right hands in the first round but the veteran barely survived the round and Anderson finished him quickly in the second.
A very impressive win for Anderson to stop Forrest, who had finished the distance in recent years against contenders Kubrat Pulev, Michael Hunter, Zhilei Zhang, and Jermaine Franklin, and Anderson is certainly the most promising American heavyweight to come along in years.
I'll be back later with the two fights from Europe in another post.
Boxing Challenge
No comments:
Post a Comment