By Nate Anderson: BBBofC light middleweight champion Ryan Rhodes (41-4, 27 KOs) added another title to his collection on Saturday night, defeating South African Vincent Vuma (26-3, 15 KOs) by a 12-round unanimous decision to win the World Boxing Council International light middleweight title at the O2 arena (Millenium, Greenwich, in London. Rhodes, 31, won the majority of the earlier rounds of the fight, but then faded somewhat in the last three rounds, giving them away to Vuma due to inaction. The final judges’ scores were 117-111, 116-112 and 116-113.
Vuma, 32, came into the fight with a 13 fight winning streak. However, he looked over-matched early on, just following Rhodes around slowly, failing to let his hands go and missing badly on the few attempts that he did make to try and land any shots.
Rhodes, 31, had him confused in the first round, as switched constantly from southpaw to orthodox and back again. Both fighters were very cautious for much of the opening round, but in the closing seconds, Rhodes opened up with a series of hard shots with Vuma backed up against the ropes.
In the second round, Rhodes was cut on the corner of his right eye after a clash of heads with Vuma. Thankfully for Rhodes, the cut was on the corner, and the blood leaked down along the side of his face rather than into his eyes. Rhodes continued to throw fast combinations, picking off the slower Vuma with ease as he came forward.
During most of the round, however, Vuma hung back and let Rhodes take the action to him. This seemed to help Rhodes a lot, because he didn’t have to worry about Vuma attacking him with his longer arms and bigger power shots.
In rounds three and four, the southpaw Rhodes continued blasting Vuma with combinations and straight lefts to the head. When Vuma would throw shots, Rhodes skillfully blocked and docked the shots with ease.
In the 5th round, Vuma began to pressure Rhodes, moving forward continuously and trying to walk him down. Rhodes moved well, circling the ring laterally and picking off Vuma with strafing shots to the head.
In the 6th round, Vuma upped his attack on Rhodes, throwing a lot of long right hands and left hooks. Like in the earlier rounds, many of Vuma’s shots came up short and missed badly, but in this case, his high punch output made up the difference. Rhodes came back strong in the 7th round, landing a lot of straight lefts to the head.
Vuma fought well in the first half of the round but Rhodes completely took over in the second half, landing a lot of short combinations. In rounds eight and nine, Rhodes did an excellent job of avoiding Vuma’s attacks, moving away from him and picking him off with precision punches.
However, it looked as if Vuma’s pressure was beginning to have an effect on Rhodes, who was showing signs of tiring out. In rounds 10 through 12, Vuma attacked fiercely, throwing a lot of punches and finding much better success at landing.
Rhodes still fought reasonably well, but he was throwing much less and moving more and more to avoid exchanges with Vuma. By this time, Vuma was so badly behind in the fight that he needed a knockout to win.
However, Rhodes didn’t give him the chance to make that happen by moving all the time.
After the bout, Rhodes said “This is my best year in boxing. This next year I want to fight for the title.”