Mckart Decisions Ornelas

By Jason Kim: Middleweight Bronko Mckart (51-7, 31 KOs) showed that he still had a little bit left in his boxing bag of tricks by beating Enrique Ornelas (25-4, 15 KOs) by split decision to capture the vacant NABF middleweight title at the New Alhambra, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on Friday night. Mckart, as usual, proved hard to hit as ducked punches and moved his torso to twist out of the way of shots thrown by Ornelas. He knocked Ornelas down in the 3rd round with a glancing right hook. There were no other knockdowns, however, and the bout quickly settled into protracted war in which both fighters traded pot shots. The judges’ scores were as follows scores were 114-113, 114-113 and 113-114.

After the fourth, Mckart didn’t throw as many punches, looking as if he was making an effort to save his energy for the late round. In fact, the fight was all Ornelas until the 8th round, when Mckart decided it was a good time to start fighting back. At that point, he began as before, landing hooks to the head and body, and generally making Ornelas look very average. Still, howeve, Mckart had to when the last two rounds in order to get the decision, considering he’d given away so many of the middle rounds due to not staying busy.