Mora Fights To Draw With Ayala

Undefeated middleweight Sergio Mora (19-0-1, 4 KOs) fought to a draw with Elvin Ayala (18-2-1, 8 KOs) on Tuesday night at the Home Depot Center, in Carson, California. Mora, 26, noted for his appearance on the reality television series “The Contender” looked slow and limited against the unorthodox Ayala, nothing like all the hype that had been built up about his since he first started appearing on the show. Mora appeared to lose the fight, as he did little other than land jabs for most of the fight. On the occasions when he would throw his slow right hand, Ayala would immediately counter him with several shots and make him not want to use the right again. The final judges’ scores were 99-91 for Mora, 96-94 for Ayala and 95-95 for a draw. The 99-91 score was crazy, looking like a judge favoring Mora because of his more well known name than any actual actual rounds he won.

Mora was coming off 14 months of inactivity in which time he turned down a fight with Jermain Taylor, saying that he wasn’t ready to fight him, and also canceled a fight with Kassim Ouma due to an injury Mora experienced while training.

Mora’s stock no doubt will go down after last night’s bout with Ayala, as he looked very limited and certainly not a top level fighter. After watching him take shot after shot from Ayala, I’m not surprised that Mora opted not to fight Taylor, because he would have been badly embarrassed by the quicker, stronger and more talented Taylor.