Estrada Stops Witherspoon

By William MacKay: In a stay busy fight, one-beaten heavyweight prospect Jason Estrada (13-1, 3 KOs) stopped an over-matched 6’6” Moultrie Witherspoon (14-2, 8 KOs) in the 7th round of a scheduled eight-round bout at the Twin River Event Center, in Lincoln, Rhode Island on Friday night. Estrada, a former Gold medalist at the 2003 Pan-American Games, three-time U.S, amateur super heavyweight champion between 2001-2003, and U.S. super heavyweight representative at the 2004 Athens Olympics, battered around the 34 year-old Witherspoon for seven rounds. The fight was finally stopped in the 7th round after Estrada, normally a very weak puncher, landed a series of hard left and right hooks to the head of Witherspoon, prompting for referee Joey Lopino to step in and halt the fight at 1:38 of the 7th round.

Estrada, 27, was coming off an impressive 10-round unanimous decision over former heavyweight contender Lance Whitaker just a month ago in April, which probably accounts for his choice of Witherspoon, a fighter clearly not in the same class as him, as an opponent. Estrada controlled the first two rounds, using left hooks and uppercuts to the head of the much taller Witherspoon.

Though Estrada fought as a super heavyweight in the Olympics, he’s not really in the traditional class of super heavyweights, in that he’s somewhat short for a heavyweight, at 6’1”, and appears to be at least 30 lbs overweight judging from his large waist and his body covered with a substantial amount of fat. The extra blubber, however, doesn’t appear to effect his hand speed, at least not yet in his career, for he showed a lot of hand speed against Witherspoon. Unfortunately, Estrada’s speed doesn’t equal to any real power because he didn’t appear to trouble Witherspoon with anything until late in the fight, even then the referee stopped the bout while Witherspoon was still on his feet and fighting back.

Part of Estrada’s problem with his lack of power against Witherspoon, was because he chose to stand much too close to him, smothering his power and Witherspoon’s in the process. Estrada has probably learned that he’s most effective at this distance, though, because he doesn’t have to risk taking big shots from his opponents, and is able to use his fast hands to land a lot of weak shots up close. There’s an added benefit as well, as the pudgy Estrada doesn’t have to move much and is able to save his legs from having to haul around his large upper body around the ring, thus conserving energy. As it is, Estrada still seemed to tire considerably by the 3rd round, losing a lot of the snap off his shots.

For almost the entire round, he threw nothing but jabs to the head of Witherspoon. Estrada could afford to do this, because Witherspoon was practically throwing nothing back at him in return.

In the 4th round, Estrada seemed to get a little more energy, allowing him to start letting his hands go once again with regularity. However, he continued to mostly throw weaker shots, looking for more speed than power. He seemed to be doing this more out of necessity than out of design, however, as he looked tired and didn’t appear to be able to fight truly hard for more than 30 seconds without it winding him badly, perhaps for the remainder of the fight. It didn’t matter, like I said, because Witherspoon had no clue what to do with Estrada. He rarely threw punches, other than uppercuts, and jabs. Those weren’t the type of shots that were going to bother Estrada, who showed against Whitaker that he has a good chin.

In rounds five and six, Estrada realized that Witherspoon had no defense for an uppercut, hence he threw it quite a bit in those two rounds, nailing Witherspoon often. For his part, Witherspoon seemed to have a sparring type attitude, in that he would mimic almost exactly the type of punches that he was getting hit with. Though, Witherspoon was much less successful with them, I got to say, because he looked like was throwing some of them (like the uppercut, for instance), for the very first time in his career.

By the 6th round, the fight was beginning to look really ugly, because Witherspoon was getting hit much too often with head shots and wasn’t answering back enough to make the fight seem even slightly competitive. At the same time, he was starting to look tired, very tired and hurt from all the punishment he’d absorbed.

In the 7th round, Witherspoon landed a series of jabs to start the round often. Estrada, however, began firing back with left uppercuts to the head and shots to the body. Witherspoon then covered up while Estrada rained big shots on him, one of which knocked Witherspoon’s mouthpiece out. After Witherspoon was forced to absorb several more right hands, the referee moved in and halted the fight while Witherspoon was still on his feet.

Though Witherspoon looked to be okay, and probably would have make it out of the round, the referee probably had seen enough, as Witherspoon was taking shots without firing back anything of significance. The fight was officially stopped at 1:38 of the 7th round.