By William Mackay: In a non-title bout, undefeated World Boxing Council (WBC) light heavyweight champion Adrian Diaconu (26-0, 15 KOs) defeated Canadian journeyman David Whittom (10-8-1, 6 KOs) by an eight-round unanimous decision tonight at the Bell Centre, in Montreal, Canada.
If Diaconu’s objective was get people excited about his May 16th title defense against his number #1 WBC challenger 42-year-old Italian Silvio Branco (57-9-2, 34 KOs), I hate to be the one to break this to him but Diaconu didn’t look all that good on Saturday night against the journeyman Whittom. Sure, Diaconu got the win, there’s no question about that.
However, Diaconu was hurt in the 5th round by a right uppercut from Whittom, 30, and he needed to grab onto him to try and shut him down after getting nailed with two more big uppercuts from Whittom. Diaconu also seemed really bothered anytime he was hit at all by Whittom, which really wasn’t all that much. On average, Whittom would light Diaconu up several times per round if that. However, it had the effect of bloodying Diaconu’s nose and swelling up his right eye.
In the 8th, Diaconu came out looking for a knockout, but when he was met with some stiff resistance from Whittom, Diaconu turned tail and run for the last minute of the round and reminded me a lot of fellow Romanian Lucian Bute. I was actually more impressed with the potential of Whittom than I was with Diaconu at that point. If that was only thing on the fight, maybe I could ignore it a little, but Diaconu also showed zero ability to cut off the ring when Whittom used the slightest amount of foot movement.
Whittom didn’t exactly have the best of movement, either, yet even moving around laterally with his lead feet seemed to give the short, 5’9″ Diaconu a lot of problems in the fight.
The final judges’ scores were 80-72, 80-72 and 79-73.
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