Naoufel Ben Rabah Defeats Mounir Guebbas

By Boxing News - 07/03/2008 - Comments

rabah444.jpgBy Chris Williams: Wily light welterweight contender Naoufel Ben Rabah (26-3, 13 KOs) defeated the tough Mounir Guebbas (10-10-3) by a 6-round points decision on Tuesday night at the Nuovo Casinò, Campione d’Italia, in Lombardia, Italy. Rabah, 30, still trying to rebuild his once promising career after back to back defeats to Lovemore N’dou and Juan Urarango in 2006 and early 2007, had a relatively easy time with Guebbas, winning every round and scoring two standing eight counts in the 3rd round after tagging Guebbas with a flurry of shots. Using a lot of movement, punching from a vast number of angles, and wheeling around the ring whipping pot shots as he went, Rabah was in a whole different level and impossible for the slower Guebbas to catch up to much less land anything of note.

In the first two rounds, Rabah sent a blueprint of how the fight would be conducted, as he flailed away with punches throwing them sometimes from the hip, like in the old style of Sugar Ray Robinson, and other times from over the top. Indeed, Rabah seemed to be a blend of many styles of fighting, never seeming to stay in one style for any length of time for a matter of seconds.

Against the limited Guebbas, this was hardly needed, however, because he was way over his head and didn’t appear to have the faintest idea of how to cope with the elusive and unpredictable Rabah. Most of the round saw Rabah tagging Guebbas with multiple combinations, often 3-4 punches at a time, all thrown very fast though not with a lot of power.

Guebbas, not particularly fast or powerful himself, had the dickens of a time trying to land anything at all, seeming to come up hitting nothing but air on most occasions when he would attempt to throw any punches. However, towards the end of the round he initiated a number of clinches, and during this time he proved to be quite proficient at throwing rabbit punches.

Rabah, however, had an answer to everything Guebbas did, in this case backing away and fighting. This is something that Rabah proved to be quite good at for he never stopped throwing punches no matter whether he was moving backwards, sideways or ducking shots; He always seemed to have something that he was unloading on Guebbas.

Watching Rabah in these rounds, I wasn’t surprised that Ricky Hatton had turned down a chance to fight Rabah. That would have been a real problem fight for Hatton, even though he clearly has a lot more power than Rabah and would be considered the favorite. Rabah is very hard to catch up with and hit with anything big, and in the process of trying to catch up to him, he’s nailing you with an avalanche of shots, making you look bad.

In the 3rd round, Rabah seemed to get serious with Guebbas, hitting him with a flurry of big shots while he was trapped against the ropes. Guebbas took the shots, trying to block them the best he could, but far too many were getting through and his head was whiplashing in every direction at the time the referee stepped in and halted the action to give Guebbas a standing eight count. He, naturally, protested it, saying that he was okay. He wasn’t, and was lucky the referee pried Rabah off of him because he was on the verge of being knocked out.

After the action was resumed, Rabah immediately started in where he had left off, winding milling shots from all kinds of angles and tagging Guebbas in the head with a horde of punches while he helplessly attempted to cover up on the ropes. Once again, the referee stopped the action and gave Guebbas another standing eight count. Most referees would have simply stopped the fight, given the fact that Guebbas was getting buried by shots one after another and had no chance against Rabah.

The referee, though, let it continue and the round ended shortly after the second standing eight count was given. In between rounds, Guebbas talked incessantly on his cell phone to someone while sitting on his stool, ignoring his trainer. It was the oddest thing I’d ever seen.

The action got a little rough in the 5th round, with Guebbas throwing elbows, forearms and rabbit shots whenever he had the opportunity to catch up to Rabah. It was the only thing that Guebbas could, so I suppose he wanted to make it count, but it didn’t stem the constant flow of punches raining down on him from Rabah, not for one second. Near the end of the round, Rabah responded to the rough fighting style of Guebbas by throwing an elbow of his own, to which the referee gave Rabah a warning.

The start of the 6th round started out nice, both fighters showing respect by hugging at the start of the final round. However, things turned quickly ugly when Guebbas once again nailed Rabah with a series of hard rabbit punches while in a clinch. This seemed to anger Rabah, who unloaded on Guebbas with a huge flurry of shots for the next minute, hitting him with a storm of punches and keeping him pinned to the ropes the entire time.

Like in the 3rd round, the referee perhaps should have stopped the fight as Guebbas was getting hit almost nonstop with head shots and not throwing back one punch for long stretches of time. Nor was he doing a very job of blocking anything thrown his way, either. After about a minute of using Guebbas as a punching bag, Rabah seemed to settle down, looking as if he felt sorry for his overmatched opponent and somewhat took it easy on him for the final minute of the round.