Molina decisions Spinks; Smith defeats Castillo

By Boxing News - 02/01/2013 - Comments

molina12By Jim Dower: Junior middleweight contender Carlos Molina (21-5-2, 6 KO’s) totally dominated former two division world champion Cory Spinks (39-8, 11 KO’s) in beating him by a lopsided 12 round unanimous decision in their IBF junior middleweight eliminator bout on Friday night at the UIC Pavilion, in Chicago, Illinois, USA.

Molina dropped Spinks in the 11th and 12th rounds of the fight and won by the judge’s scores of 120-105, 119-106 and 119-106. Spinks was warned repeatedly about ducking below the waist during the fight in order to try and avoid getting hit with Molina’s powerful body shots. In later rounds, Spinks gassed out and took a lot of punishment. The fight was hard to watch because of the ugly inside fighting.

This is Spinks third in his last five fights, and it’s going to be hard for him to come back from this because he’s running out of opportunities.

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Welterweight Antwone Smith (23-4-1, 12 KO’s) had it easy in defeating 39-year-old former IBF lightweight champion Jose Luis Castillo (64-12-1, 55 KO’s) by a one-sided 10 round unanimous decision. The final judges’ scores were 100-90, 98-92 and 99-91.

The 26-year-old was the busier guy with the better power, and superior hand speed. Castillo in his prime would have likely beaten Smith with ease, but Castillo doesn’t look like the same fighter he was 11 years ago when he giving Floyd Mayweather Jr. all he could handle.

Smith was able to land well with his jabs, and tag Castillo with uppercuts, hooks and right hands to control the action. Castillo tried to make a fight of it, but he lacked the power the power to really worry Smith. This is the wrong weight class for Castillo, but he doesn’t have much choice because he can no longer make lightweight.

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Undefeated heavyweight Artur Szpika (13-0, 10 KO’s) kept his unbeaten record intact with a nice 6th round TKO victory against Mike Mollo (20-14-1, 12 KO’s). Szpika flattened Mollo in the 6th round with a big left hand. The fight was then stopped at 2:45 of the round. Before you get excited about Szpika and see him as a future world champion, you’ll have to realize that he knocked down twice in the fight by Mollo; once in the 1st round and another time in the 4th. Those knockdowns suggest that Szpika is going to have a really tough time trying to climb the heavyweight ranks to get a world title shot.



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