By Nate Anderson: In one of the poorer scored fights I can recall seeing, light welterweight prospect Joel Torres (9-0-1, 5 KOs) and Christopher Fernandez (15-4-1, 9 KOs) fought to an 8-round draw on Wednesday night at the Gotham Hall, in New York, New York. The final judges’ scores were 77-75, for Torres, 78-74, for Fernandez and the third judge scored it 76-76. I personally had Torres winning by several rounds, but I suppose the judges’ can’t be blamed because Torres, who had came into the fight as the one expected to win, was hardly impressive to say the least. In fact, both fighters looked bad and fought a mostly boring fight, holding often and landing few hard shots in the fight.
Torres concentrated mostly on the midsection of Fernandez in the opening round, hitting him with hooks repeatedly. Fernandez, the bigger and stronger guy, allowed the shorter Torres to crowd him. Although Fernandez, 32, seemed to relish the idea of fighting on the inside for some reason, often coming in close to Torres and trying to out-punch him at close quarters. Being the shorter guy, Torres seemed more than happy to oblige Fernandez with his inside fighting game and freely fire back with short punches. The punches were terribly weak, however, which is where the judges’ probably figured that Fernandez was doing better, even though he was landing much less frequently than Torres. So far, I was coming close to being impressed with neither fighter.
In the fourth and fifth round, Fernandez did well, hitting Torres with some big shots on the inside. It was made easier for Fernandez in that Torres’ defense was rather poor. Additionally, Torres had a bad habit of retreating backwards in a straight line when attacked rather than moving side to side, which allowed Fernandez to stride forward and use his long arms to swat Torres on occasion. As the fight progressed, I kept wondering when Torres would start showing some impressive skills, for I thought maybe he was saving them away for some reason until the later rounds. Whatever the case, he was looking very, very average to me, not like a fighter that should be considered a future champion.
In the sixth round, both fighters traded shot for shot, making it difficult to pick a conclusive winner in the round. Like always, Fernandez landed the harder shots, so I suppose he should have been given the round since both of them landed about equally. I personally scored the round even, though I would be okay with either fighter getting the nod in the round. Torres was leaving himself open a lot of the time when landing body shots. Each time, Fernandez would reach out and clock him while he was standing there admiring his work.
In the last two rounds of the fight, the seventh and eighth, Torres appeared to do more than enough to win them. He out-landed Fernandez by a wide margin and seemed to have more strength at the end. There was no way I could see Torres not winning the fight, even though he was hardly impressive. Just on the basis of his superior work rate alone, he should have been given the decision.
In other action on the same card, undefeated featherweight prospect Joselito Collado (3-0, 1 KOs) won a lopsided 4-round unanimous decision over Jose Ortiz (1-2, 1 KOs) in an interesting fight. Unlike Torres, Collado, 25, showed some excellent skills, throwing textbook hooks to the body and head of Ortiz and easily outclassing him along the way. Collado took the fight to Ortiz in the first round, attacking him with blistering books to the head.
Ortiz, however, was game and fired back often but with a lot less power on his shots than Collado. At times, Ortiz didn’t look all that bad despite taking a methodical beating from Collado, almost like a poor man’s version of Paulie Malignaggi. However, Ortiz was far less skillful at avoiding getting hit as Malignaggi is, as Caollado often found it remarkably easy to hit Ortiz. Part of the problem for Ortiz, I seems, is that he kept his guard low at all times and would often walk forward with his face totally unprotected. Collado, naturally, took full advantage of Ortiz’s poor defense and tagged him often with shots to the head, and particularly the body.
Collado looked very relaxed in the 2nd round, appearing as if he were having an easy sparring session at the gym. In contrast, Ortiz was going full out, his foot to the floor, trying to fight as hard as he could given his mediocre talent. He constantly came forward firing weak shots, many which were effortlessly blocked by Collado. Some would get through, but do little to stem the flow of Collado’s own shots.
In rounds three and four, Collado continued to pound away at Ortiz, beating him like an old rug with a stick. Despite the one-sided nature of the fight, Ortiz made it interesting with his aggressive attacks. He never stopped coming forward, even though taking big shots from Collado repeatedly. In the final round, Ortiz landed well, perhaps even enough to make it close but only because Collado seemed bored by him by now.
The final judges’ scores were 40-36, 40-36 and 40-36, all for Collado.