By Bradley Tice: In a fight that was supposed to be a stay-busy bout for French Light middleweight Hussein Bayram 27-3, 14 KOs), he was forced to struggle to defeat the tough Romanian Gheorghe Danut (7-10-6) by a six-round split decision on Tuesday night at the Parc des Sports et Loisirs, Pont-Audemer, Eure, France. Bayram, 32, was knocked down with 20 seconds late in the 1st round after walking into a powerful left hand from Danut. Bayram continued to have problems in the 2nd round as well, when he was nailed by a big left hand from Danut and momentarily stunned by the shot. However, Bayram, a fighter accustomed to fighting 10-12 rounds fights instead of six-rounds, began to warm in the 3rd round and then appeared to win the remaining rounds of the six-round bout as Danut badly tired out after the first two rounds.
Bayram looked bad in the first round, his reflexes slow, and his hand speed even slower, as he was hit often by the fast-punching Danut. Indeed, Bayram had a hard time landing his shots in the first round due to the quick movement from Danut, who would get inside and throw a flurry, then quickly dart away before Bayram could get his ponderous shots off. In fact, Bayram only connected with small amount of shots in the round and was already losing the round by a significant margin when he was clipped with a left hand from Danut with 20 seconds to go and knocked down.
Bayram didn’t appear hurt, only startled as he walked into the punch as he was coming forward and clearly didn’t see the shot coming. Bayram scarcely had any idea that Danut would fight so fiercely, for if he had would have likely trained harder for the fight because he looked badly rusty in comparison to how he looked against top light middleweight contender Zaurbek Baysangurov, who defeated Bayram by a narrow 12-round unanimous decision in July 2007.
Danut, a fighter used to losing, seemed excited and confident coming out to start the 2nd round. Whereas Baryam was throwing slow shots, one at a time, Danut was all over him, hitting him with lightning fast flurries both to the head and body. Bayram, for his part, would try to respond to the attacks but found himself hitting mostly air due rusty timing. Without the speed to match the smaller Danut, Bayram needed to count on using pressure and timing to try and compensate for his hand peed deficiencies. However, Bayram, again, hardly laid a glove on Danut, who pounded Bayram with clean shuts to the head.
Late in the round, Danut clocked Bayram with a perfect left hand that caused Bayram’s knees to sag for a fraction of a second. However, it came with only 15 seconds to go in the round, which didn’t give Danut enough time to follow up with anything to go with it. Danut looked to have punched himself from his exertion in the first two rounds of the fight, and was in bad shape in the 3rd round as Bayram began getting into the fight. Danut was quickly warned twice by the referee for the use of his head, after coming forward repeatedly with his head down and ramming Bayram in the first minute of the round. Bayram finished the round strong, hitting Danut with some sharp combinations to the head.
The southpaw Danut, 23, continued to give Bayram problems in the third round, continuously pounding him with fast flurries before he could respond with his own shots. Bayram was still looking slow and the combination of Danut’s movement and his speed was bothering Bayram quite a bit. Bayram, disparate to land a shot against the fast moving Danut, resorted to holding and hitting him in the round. At the end of the round, Bayram caught Danut with a big right hand. Danut took it, however, without going down or showing signs of being hurt.
Both fighters clashed heads at the start of the 5th round. It was a long time coming, because Danut was continuing with his head first attacks, and I had come to expect that they’ve bump heads soon if Danut had continued with this style of attack. The fifth round belonged entirely to Bayram, who would land a combination and then would immediately be tied up in a clinch by Danut. This dull process would repeat itself over and over again for the remainder of the round, as Danut was now too tired to get his own shots off and was instinctively trying to shut down Bayram’s offense the best way he would.
Bayram appeared at this best in the sixth and final round, as he threw powerful right hands, left hooks and straight rights to the head of Danut. There was still an awful lot of clinches, but in between that boring action, Bayram kept blasting away at the fading Danut with mostly head shots. By the end of the round, Danut’s mouth was bleeding and he looked exhausted.