Boxing Challenge: Benavidez no picnic for Boo Boo

   David Benavidez stamped himself again as the best possible opponent for world super middleweight champion Canelo Alvarez when Demetrius Andrade was unable to answer the bell for the start of round seven in their Las Vegas clash.

Andrade started well, outboxing Benavidez in the first two rounds before Benavidez began landing in the third round and dominated thereafter, knocking Andrade down in the fourth with a body shot, and battering a very game Andrade in the fifth and sixth.

With Andrade's right eye starting to swell badly, referee Thomas Taylor asked Andrade to show him something in the upcoming round or he would have to stop the fight, Andrade's corner did the right thing in protecting their fighter by ending the evening for Andrade.

A dominant win for Benavidez and the best of his career in my opinion and Andrade was brave in taking his first defeat, showing more in defeat against the bigger man than he may have in his previous wins.

Benavidez once again called out Canelo Alvarez, who hadn't seemed interested in fighting Benavidez in the past, and I'd be surprised if Alvarez answered that call in his next outing, even though Alvarez still has two more fights scheduled with PBC, the promoter for Benavidez.

Benavidez is bigger, younger, and stronger than Canelo, and a prospective fight between the two reminds me of another all-Mexican battle between Oscar De La Hoya and Julio Cesar Chavez, which also ended with the younger, stronger, and faster De La Hoya winning on cuts in four rounds in 1996 and winning the rematch in eight rounds.

Benavidez deserves the shot at Canelo next but if I had to guess who is going to get that chance, that man made his ring return after almost a two-and-a-half year absence in WBC middleweight champion Jermall Charlo, who missed weight by multiple pounds even though he was fighting above his division limit.

Charlo looked better than I expected in winning an easy unanimous decision over the much smaller Jose Benavidez over ten rounds held at a catchweight in the super middleweight division.

Charlo didn't score a knockdown but under the circumstances that's about the only thing to be critical of his outing but remember this- Benavidez is a natural 140-pounder, entered the fight with a record of 1-2-1 over the last five years, and he was knocked out by Terence Crawford, so while Benavidez is a tough customer, this wasn't a quality contender Charlo was beating.

Charlo won by scores of 100-90, 99-91, and 98-92 which was my score.

I haven't seen the other two title fights which saw Subriel Matias stop Shohjahon Ergashev in six to retain his IBF junior welterweight title, and Lamont Roach defeat Hector Luis Garcia by split decision to win the WBA junior lightweight belt.

I did see the YouTube free fight with Michel Rivera winning a close unanimous decision over Sergey Lipinets in a ten-round junior welterweight battle.

I scored Rivera the winner at 96-94.

Boxing Challenge

TRS: 177 Pts (3)

Ramon Malpica: 160 Pts (3)

Vince Samano:115 Pts (0)

Boxing Challenge: Garcia dominates Benavidez

       The Saturday PBC card from Barclays Center in Brooklyn won't go down as the greatest event ever but it will be remembered for two controversial decisions that rank as some of the worst in 2022.

In the main event, Danny Garcia seemed to have easily outpointed Jose Benavidez in his return from an eighteen-month layoff before a decision that was surprisingly close on the scorecards.

My score was 119-109 for Garcia, which seemed to be close to how most watchers saw the fight but the actual judges scored Garcia a much closer winner at 117-111, 116-112, and a downright nutty 114-114.

Garcia looked sharp and even though he never hurt Benavidez, he outboxed him and was far too skilled for the much slower fighter, who was relegated to the occasional counter right hand for his only success against Garcia.

How much of Garcia's outing was due to his layoff to recharge his batteries or was it that the once-promising Benavidez simply has been unable to recover his ability from a gunshot wound that damaged his leg, won't be known until his next outing, which could be against former WBC junior middleweight champion Tony Harrison, who was mentioned during the fight, or against former welterweight champion Keith Thurman, who handed Garcia his first defeat via split decision in 2017 and was mentioned by Garcia at the post-fight press conference as his next fight.

The co-feature was expected to be an action fight and it lived up to those thoughts as Turkey's Ali Eren Demirezen handed Adam Kownacki his third defeat in a row and hopefully will make Kownacki consider retirement.

Demirezen controlled the second half of the fight, wearing down Kownacki as he cut him over the left eye.

Demirezen will likely slide into a title eliminator soon and could win should he be paired with someone that will stand and trade with him but anyone with movement will give the former Olympian major issues.

The best and most controversial fight of the evening was the opener when junior welterweight contender Gary Antuanne Russell was receiving all that he wanted from former IBF junior lightweight and lightweight champion Rances Barthelemy before a very questionable sixth-round stoppage by referee Shada Murdaugh.

Barthelemy isn't known for his thrilling contests or for engaging in toe to toe action but the Cuban did both in this one as he stung Russell in both the first and fourth rounds and led on my card after five rounds 48-47.

Russell was leading on all three official cards though and crunched Barthelemy with a leaping left hook in the sixth to send him to the canvas.

Barthelemy immediately rose and didn't stagger around like a hurt fighter yet referee Murdaugh called off the fight, robbing Russell of a possible convincing win, Barthelemy a chance to ride out the storm, and viewers of a surprisingly entertaining battle.

A rematch would seem to be in order, and even though Russell may have been solving Barthelemy's style, I'm not sure I'd be interested if I handled Russell.

I might figure that my fighter showed heart, ring smarts, and learned some things against a good opponent and move on to bigger things but PBC isn't loaded in the junior welterweight division, although the promotion will have the recently vacated WBA title in their stable with the paper championship being filled next month and the winner of Batyr Akhmedov-Alberto Puello (Akhmedov is a solid favorite in my opinion)  could be in the future for Russell.

Boxing Challenge

TRS: 137 Pts (4)

Ramon Malpica: 115 Pts (2)

Vince Samano:111 Pts  (2) 

Boxing Challenge: Crawford Cuts Down Benavidez

It was a WBO weekend in the Boxing Challenge with three championships being defended in various venues and two quarterfinals in the World Boxing Super Series.

The biggest bout hailed from Omaha, Nebraska where hometown star Terence Crawford ripped home a tremendous uppercut in the final round to drop Jose Benavidez and followed up with the most ferocious finishing attack in the business to end the fight with a beaten Benavidez helpless and sliding along the ropes.
Benavidez fought pretty well for the first half of the fight, but Crawford steadily wore the taller and seemingly larger opponent down and was well ahead on my scorecard (8-3) entering the final round.

The problem for Jose Benavidez and what a talented fighter hasn't been able to figure out to date, is that he has excellent physical advantages for the division (tall and strong), but has never learned to use them.
In other words, Benavidez doesn't fight "tall" and use a strong jab to keep opponents on their back foot.
When Benavidez tried that against Crawford and he didn't do enough of it, he had success and whether Crawford took that away from him or he simply refused to continue using what worked, that is where the fight swung to Crawford.

As for Terence Crawford, arguably the top fighter in the world, it looks like a mandatory defense next and then who knows what waits on the Top Rank side.
Everyone wants to see Errol Spence vs Terence Crawford, but the problem is that the guy that likes to fight and wants to be more active (Crawford) doesn't have a lot of fights available, while the person that is content with one or two fights a year (Spence) has plenty of them that are easy to make.
I hate to say it, but we might look back down the road at Crawford-Spence and that might be another great fight that never happened or at least, happened too late.

On the undercard, Olympic silver medalist Shakur Stevenson knocked down late replacement Viorel Simion three times in the first round in a round one stoppage in showing the power that Stevenson had yet to flash in his start as a pro.
A great performance by Stevenson, but I thought the refereeing was inept as the second knockdown was clearly a slip and despite Simion being badly hurt after the third knockdown, the bell clanged loudly that the round was over after Simion rose, yet the referee stopped the fight rather than allow Simion the minute between rounds to try to put things together.
I'm very doubtful that would have happened, but Simion deserved the chance to try.
Bad refereeing happens so often in states like Nebraska that rarely have fight cards and I know that there would be a certain degree of hassle involved, but I'd really like to see referees (and judges for that matter) be imported that have more experience for the world-class cards that are scheduled for less than world class boxing states.

In Russia, the World Boxing Super Series limped to a slow beginning with two quarter-finals in two divisions that went the distance and excited no one.
In the cruiserweight division, American Andrew Tabiti won a unanimous decision over Ruslan Fayfer in a less than exciting fight.
The most exciting thing in this fight was Fayfer's point deduction in the last round for pushing.
I scored Tabiti a 115-112 winner and Tabiti will face the winner of this weekend's Yunier Dorticos-Mateusz Masternak matchup in the semi's.

The other fight in the bantamweight divisional tournament wasn't more exciting as lanky Zolani Tete retained his WBO title with a unanimous decision over a decorated amateur, but inexperienced professional in Mikhail Aloyan,
Outside of Tete knocking Aloyan down in the first round, the bout was eleven rounds of attempted movement by Tete and loads of grabbing, wrestling, and holding by both boxers to the point of both fighters having a point deducted.
Tete will face the winner of the upcoming WBA title fight between Ryan Burnett and Nonito Donaire in the next round.
Let's hope that both Tabiti and Tete will deliver better fights in their next fights than they did last week.

I'm not sure how many people were watching on Facebook as this fight took place at the same time as Terence Crawford was fighting on ESPN, but WBO light flyweight champ Angel Acosta took out Abraham Rodriguez with a bullet of a left hook in the second round as you'll see anywhere.
I'm not sure what Acosta has next for his future, but for his size, he punches as hard as anyone under 126 pounds.

In the boxing challenge, I outscored Ramon Malpica 8-7 on the weekend to increase my lead to 167-143 on the season.