By Chris Williams: Freddie Roach trained light welterweight Ruslan Provodnikov (22-1, 15 KO’s) easily took care of Jose Reynoso (16-4-1, 3 KO’s) last night in a 2nd round knockout at the Omega Products International, in Corona, California. It was a fight that destined to be an easy knockout win for the Rusisan Provodnikov, because Reynoso wasn’t in his class even before the fight was made.
The short 5’6″ Provodnikov pounded the 5’10” southpaw Reynoso with power shots from the get go, and landed some really nice right hands to the head and body in both the 1st and 2nd rounds. However, Provodnikov was getting hit with clean left hands constantly from Reynoso, and this shouldn’t have been happening given then Reynoso is a 2nd tier fighter. Provodnikov is ranked #2 by the WBO in the light welterweight division, yet he looked like nothing special.
In the 2nd round, Provodnikov landed a couple of hard right hands to the body and then finished Reynoso off with big right hand to the head while he was backed up to the ropes. Reynoso, with his nose bleeding and flattened, made it to his feet, but the fight was halted by the referee.
My thoughts on the fight is that Provodnikov has a ton of work ahead of him if he wants to ever win a world title. I know he was working recently as Manny Pacquiao’s sparring partner, but I don’t think he improved any from before. If anything, I thought Provodnikov looked worse than he had in the past, because he was just winging punches and getting tagged. That’s how Pacquiao fights. Instead of sparring with Pacquiao, Provnikov needed to be sparring with someone with some defense like Lucas Matthysse.
Right now, Provodnikov reminds me of a poor man’s Pawel Wolak but without his ability to throw nonstop punches and use his left as well. As far as I can tell, Provodnikov hardly threw any left hands last night. The ones that he did throw lacked power, and it seemed like he hasn’t worked on developing that hand. That’s what his trainer Roach is supposed to do. Since he’s still just a right hand puncher without size or defense, Provodnikov probably won’t go anywhere in the division even with his inflated ranking by the WBO.
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