By Dave Lahr: Making his 1st defense of his IBF light welterweight title, champion Juan Urango (22-1-1, 17 KO’s) stopped number #1 International Boxing Federation challenger Randall Bailey (39-7, 35 KO’s) in the 11th round on Friday night at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, in Hollywood, Florida.
Urango, 28, survived a 6th round knockdown and a bad cut under his right eye to come back and knock Bailey down two times in the 9th and one more time in the 10th. Bailey, 34, soon to be 35 next month, had nothing left after knocking Urango down in the 6th round. From then on, Bailey only rarely threw any big right hand shots and pretty much stopped throwing punches altogether.
This allowed Urango to take over the fight with his solid power shots. After knocking Bailey down in the 9th, Urango spent much of the remainder of the fight chasing Bailey around the ring at a full gallop. Normally, a fighter moving quickly like this would be asking for trouble, but Bailey was far too tired to make Urango pay for his lack of boxing basics and let him get away with it.
Although knocking Urango down in the 6th, Bailey looked every bit of his 34 years and then some. Most of the fight, Bailey tapped Urango with a lazy jab and measured him constantly for right hands. Bailey seemed to wait far too long while preparing to throw his right hands and wasted a lot of time waiting for Urango to be at the proper distance for him to throw his rights.
Going into the fight, Bailey had to have known that Urango had an iron chin and that he was almost impossible to knock out. The smarter thing for Bailey to have done, in hindsight, is to have worked on his jab and movement instead of putting so much focus on his right hand. The way to beat Urango is through movement and a jab, not by trying to bang him out of there the way that Bailey was trying to do.
In the 6th round, Bailey landed a short right hand that put Urango down flat on his back on the canvas. On the knockdown, Bailey blinded Urango temporarily by throwing a pawing jab and then came directly behind it with a hard right hand that Urango never saw. The right hand cut Urango under his right eye, opening up a huge gash that leaked blood everywhere.
Luckily for Urango, the cut was underneath the eye and not above it, because this allowed the blood to leak down his face rather than into his eye. Urango’s right eye would later swell up as the rounds went by, and had Bailey continued to land heavy shots beyond the 6th, Urango’s right eye would have likely closed.
At the start of the 9th round, Urango knocked a tired Bailey down with a left hand in the opening seconds of the round. Bailey was badly hurt by the shot and tried clinching his way out of the round. However, there was far too much time in the round to clinch all the way through.
Moments later, Urango ran at Bailey and knocked him down for a second time in the round with a left to the head. Urango got a little too impatient at that point and missed with a ton of punches as Bailey stood covering up in the corner. In the 10th round, Urango knocked Bailey down with a right hand to the side.
Bailey was exhausted at that point in the fight and not throwing any punches back at Urango. Somehow, Bailey’s corner allowed the fight to continue even though he was no longer even remotely competitive. In the 11th, Bailey’s corner finally stepped in and let the referee know that they wanted the fight to be stopped. Bailey was taking a terrible beating in the round and not firing back any punches. The referee stopped the bout at 1:51 of the round.
Overall, it was a good performance from Urango. He did what he had to do to get the victory. However, Urango looked as one dimensional and slow as he always looks. He’s fortunate that his opponent was Bailey and not someone like Timothy Bradley, Kendall Holt or Devon Alexander, because Urango would have likely been beaten by a lopsided decision against skilled fighters like them. Urango is good when matched against stationary sluggers like Bailey. However, if Urango is presented with a fighter that can move a little, he has major problems.
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