Murray Decisions Hamidi

By Boxing News - 05/12/2008 - Comments

murray4432.jpgBy Scott Gilfoid: In an especially badly scored fight, BBBofC English lightweight champion John Murray (24-0, 12 KOs) defeated Youssef Al Hamidi (4-9-1, 1 KOs) in a scheduled 8-round bout at the Nottingham Arena in Nottinghamshire, England on Saturday night. Murray, 23, won by the score of 77-75, which seemed like a gift decision because it was Hamidi who appeared to win six of the first eight rounds of the fight. Many in the crowd hated the decision and gave a chorus of boos to Murray, letting them know what they thought of the decision. To say that Murray struggled against Hamidi would be putting it lightly.

In most of the rounds of the fight, Murray couldn’t lay a glove on Hamidi, as he followed him around the ring taking repeated shots from the 5’5” Syrian born fighter. Up until the 7th round, Murray was only able to land in the single digits against the elusive Hamidi, who used foot movement and twists of his torso to dodge the slow and labored punching style of Murray. In terms of speed, Murray has got to be one of the slowest punching lightweights I’ve seen, and it’s frankly astonishing that he’s a champion of anything. Whatever the case, he may have got the decision but he didn’t win the fight, not as far as I’m concerned. That was a case of a fighter winning when they shouldn’t have.

Hamidi was just far too fast and skilled for Murray to deal with and it turned out to be a one-sided fight until the 7th round. At that point, Hamidi seemed to tire out and allow Murray to land a little more shots. He still didn’t land much but it was enough to win these two rounds at least, mostly because Hamidi was generally just clinching and moving in the last two rounds.

Hamidi dominated the action in the first three rounds, using his fast jab and in and out movement to score fast shots without getting a glove laid on him by Murray. Indeed, Murray only landed three punches in the first round, while taking countless shots from Hamidi. In the second round, Murray continued to plod slowly after Hamidi taking dozens of shots to the head as he came forth. Murray did a little better in this round, landing an anemic six punches while taking massive head shots. By this time, Murray’s face was beginning to turn red around the eyes from the punches he’d absorbed in the two rounds. Murray’s poor connect rate continued into the third with him landing only five punches.

It was a lopsided round as Hamidi pasted him regularly with blazing fast combinations before skittering away to the outside. Murray seemed puzzled by Hamidi’s style and didn’t know what to do to solve his elusive style. He should have perhaps let his hands go a lot more, that would have been a good start for him, because he was rarely throwing punches. It wasn’t a case of him missing but rather him just not letting his hands go.

There was no way on earth you could give Murray any of the rounds at this point of the fight, unless you did it out of sympathy for him due to the one-sided beating he was taking. At least he wasn’t getting hit with massive shots because Hamidi was a rather weak puncher and none of his shots had hardly anything on them. They still scored though and outnumbered Murray’s shots by an almost 10-1 margin.

In rounds four through six, Hamidi continued with his domination of the slow Murray, hitting him with flurries and barely getting hit at all in doing so. Murray was cut on the right side of his head in the 5th round from a clash of heads with Hamidi, and blood poured down the side of his head, making it seem as if his ear was bleeding. Hamidi continued to completely dominate Murray, landing the same high number of shots without getting hit hardly at all in return. In the sixth round, Hamidi began to show signs of slowing down as he was hit a little more often by Murray and Hamidi’s punch output dropped off a bit. He still did more than enough to win the round by out landing Murray by a wide margin but you could see that Hamidi, who took the fight on short notice, was tiring out.

In rounds seven and eight, Murray took over the fight, though still landing a very low number of his punches. Hamidi was mostly clinching and moving, trying to get through the rounds. Hamidi still out-landed Murray in both rounds but it was more of a case of a 3-1 margin instead of the previous 10-1 margin.