By Chris Williams: Undefeated British featherweight Paul Truscott (11-0, 1 KOs) defeated Osumanu Akaba (10-4, 8 KOs) by a tough 12-round unanimous decision on Friday night to win the vacant Commonwealth (British Empire) featherweight title at the Eston Sports Academy, Middlesbrough, in Yorkshire. Truscott, only 22, traded rounds with the hard-hitting Akaba, who refused to give any ground to the highly skilled Truscott. The final judges’ scores were 116-112, 115-113 and 116-112, all for Truscott. Many of the rounds were very close and difficult to score because Akaba often wouldn’t land as many shots as Truscott, yet his punches were much harder than the weaker-punching Truscott.
In the first round, it appeared that Akaba would simply be too strong for the rail-thin Truscott as landed a high number of powerful hooks to the head of Truscott. However, after being dominated for the first two minutes of the round, Truscott showed what was in store for Akaba later on in the fight, as he began to return fire with piercing combinations and excellent hooks. Though his punches were not even close to being as hard as Akaba, they were thrown with excellent form and were quite constant in nature.
In the 2nd and 3rd round, Truscott fiercely attacked Akaba with numerous combinations to the head and body, mixing up his shots skillfully and keeping Akaba guessing as to what was coming next. Akaba, however, continued to land hard punches, though he wasn’t able to put his shots together like Truscott and was getting out-landed as a result by a fairly substantial number. The third round was very close, with Akaba dominating the early portion of the round as he attacked Truscott with some hard punches to the head. Just when it seemed that Akaba had taken control of the fight, Truscott came on late in the round and landed a ton of fast punches to the head of Akaba. The crowd ate up Truscott’s impressive work and applauded loudly during the round.
Akaba responded well in the 4th round, taking the fight to Truscott and landing some hard punches to the head. Truscott’s nose was bloodied during the round and he began to show signs of a welt underneath his right eye.
In the 5th round, Akaba started well, hitting Truscott with a huge amount of power shots to the head. Truscott, for all his excellent offensive work, was essentially wide open for anything that Akaba threw in the round. It’s not that Akaba was all that accurate of a puncher, but mostly because Truscott just didn’t seem to know how to properly block punches with his arms and gloves. However, Truscott responded well to Akaba’s attacks, and returned fire in the last minute of the round, perhaps enough to win the round by a slight margin. When he was letting his hands go, Truscott had a way of erasing everything that had occurred before that the way he would thrown an avalanches of shots that would pretty much overwhelm Akaba’s defenses.
In rounds six and seven, Truscott began to pull away from Akaba, who for his part was showing signs of slowing down under the strain of the fight. In both rounds, Truscott landed a high amount of shots and out-landed Akaba by a substantial number. Akaba did start the beginning of the 7th well, hitting Truscott with a flurry of shots at the start of the round. However, after shooting his load, Akaba settled down to just taking shots for the remainder of the round.
Akaba did well in the 8th round, dominating the entire round with his high work rate. He looked good and kept Truscott from getting his shots off because of his constant downpour of big punches. It seemed as if Akaba had gotten his second wind because he looked once again fresh, almost as good as he did in the 1st round of the fight.
Truscott came back well in the 9th round, and once again outworked Akaba, hitting him with constant shots. Akaba still looked incredibly good and landed some really stinging shots, but Truscott was like a wind up punching machine in the round and never seemed to stop throwing for an instant, even when taking big shots to the head.
In the 10th and 11th round, Akaba came on strong and landed some particularly huge punches to the head of Truscott. Covered with blood from his badly bleeding nose, Truscott looked a mess. He fought back hard in both rounds, but was continuously on the receiving end of really jarring shots from the more powerful Akaba. Truscott’s eyes were now starting to swell up and looked bad.
With the fight on the line, Truscott came out and fought tooth and nail in the 12th round, appearing to do enough to win the round. Akaba looked exhausted as he winged huge punches over and over, but he missed many of the shots and took a steady stream of hooks to the head and body from Truscott during the round.