By Chet Mills: Former two-time heavyweight champion, now fighting as a cruiserweight, Herbie Hide (44-4, 41 KOs) out-pointed Nuri Seferi (21-6, 15 KOs), defeating him by a unanimous decision on Friday night to retain his WBC International cruiserweight title at the Bueyuek Anadolu Hotel, in Ankara, Turkey. Hide, survived a 1st round knockdown in which Seferi, 31, threw a wild left hook that caught Hide in the chin, sending him down.
Seferi, a fighter with poor offensive skills and even worse boxing skills, wasn’t able to pout Hide down again in the fight, and ended up losing all of the remaining rounds of the fight, not even making it close. The final judge’s scores were 117-112, 119-110 and 117-111 for Hide.
After getting knocked down in the 1st, Hide responded well, and took the fight to Seferi in the remainder of the round, jabbing him and landing one out of a handful of rights that he attempted. Hide was content to jab Seferi for the rest of the way, circling him and jabbing him, using his boxing skills to control Seferi.
For his part, Seferi did little punching for the remainder of the fight, fighting hard for brief spurts, and even then not landing. Hide would instant retreat if Seferi even looked at him wrong, backing away and trying to tie him up. Like in most of his fights, Hide fought in his usual rough manner, holding and hitting, throwing punches on the break, landing rabbit punches and forearms.
In the 5th round, in the first clinch of the round, Hide held onto Seferi and pounded him with rabbit punches with his free hand.
This led to a warning from the referee. I’m not sure why Hide was wasting his time with this kind of rough stuff, because he was easily beating Seferi just by jabbing him, and didn’t need to bother with all the extracurricular activity. It was as one-sided as it could be, and though Hide wasn’t able to dominate him with his power like he used to do to his opponents in the past, at least he was still winning.
As the rounds progressed, Seferi did less and less, not even hardly trying to land a punch and just letting Hide jab away at him from the outside.
Hide looked old and slow, unable to land his right hand with any regularity against Seferi for most of the fight, and having to jab his way to victory. For Hide, that’s got to be a big departure from what he was in the past, a fighter known for his blazing hand speed and excellent power in both hands. His speed is largely gone now, making it hard for him to land his right hand without getting countered or missing badly.
Against the low bottom dwelling opponents that he’s been fed lately, he hasn’t had to worry about being countered when he throws his right hand (that’s to come later when he eventually fights for a title). He does seem bothered about his lack of hand speed and his inability to land it anymore, because he doesn’t throw it anywhere close to how often he previously did in his youth.
Hide, 36, was making his 10th fight as a cruiserweight, virtually all of them against journeyman level opponents. His fight against Seferi on Saturday night was no different than the rest. It was shocking, however, and perhaps a good indication of how much Hide has left as a fighter, to see him getting knocked down by an opponent in the class of Seferi.
Ranked #4 in the WBC and WBO, Hide has been pushed to the top of the division despite not having fought one good opponent in his 10 fights as a cruiserweight, and if he continues with this course, beating one or two more low quality fighters, he’s going to find himself in a title shot against either WBC champion Rudolf Kraj or whoever emerges at the top of the WBO. I’d give exactly zero chance of beating anyone in the top 10, from what I saw of him on Saturday night.
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