The two-featherweight title doubleheader from Verona, New York featured three excellent performances, one champion retaining his title, and a new champion who may only be a champion for a while.
In the main event, Raymond Ford was seconds away from losing a split decision to Otabek Kholmatov before the referee stopped the fight with seven seconds to give Ford the vacant WBA featherweight title in an excellent back-and-forth fight that ended in controversy.
Entering the final round, two judges scored Kholmatov ahead by three points (I had Kholmatov one point ahead) and the remaining had Ford leading by one point when Ford knocked Kholmatov into the ropes with a right hand, which should have been scored a knockdown as only the ropes allowed him to avoid the knockdown.
It was not ruled as one, which would have cost Ford the fight without the stoppage but Ford attacked Kholmatov and forced Kholmatov to turn his back as he wobbled into the ropes with the referee ending the fight with seven seconds remaining.
Had the original knockdown been called AND if Kholmatov's turned-back back had been called a knockdown rather than ending the fight, it still would have ended in a majority draw.
Ford battled through a badly bleeding cut under his cheekbone from a late-round collision of heads and while Kholmatov had entered the fight with the reputation as the heavy hitter, it was Ford, who was regarded as the boxer, that was walking down the retreating Kholmatov.
Ford had problems making the weight and even before the fight announced that he might be moving up in weight to junior lightweight- win or lose.
Ford said the same in the post-fight interview and should he make that decision, the WBA title will once again be vacant.
Should the WBA decide not to include Kholmatov, their top two contenders would be former unified junior featherweight champion Stephen Fulton, who somehow wound up in that spot despite losing his last fight to Naoya Inoue and never fighting in the division, and Argentina's Mirco Cuello, who is unbeaten against soft opposition.
In the co-feature Luis Alberto Lopez broke the orbital bone of Japan's Reiya Abe, producing impressive swelling around the right eye of Abe, and battered him until the fight was stopped in the eighth round to retain his IBF featherweight title.
Not much to say about this one other than Lopez's style makes me think of Prince Naseem Hamed, Abe was very brave in defeat, and it is going to be very hard for Lopez to be in a dull fight.
Lopez would have likely faced Kholmatov in a unification fight, had he held on to win against Raymond Ford but Ford's win will likely put that prospect on hold.
No comments:
Post a Comment