By Scott Gilfoid: Previously unbeaten middleweight John Ryder (15-1, 9 KO’s) found himself on the receiving end of a HIGHLY questionable decision in losing a 12 round unanimous decision to the arguably more popular but limited light hitting Billy Joe Saunders (19-0, 10 KO’s) at the Copper Box Arena, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Hackney Wick, London, United Kingdom.

The final judges scores were 115-114, 115-113 and 115-113. I had Ryder winning 8 rounds to 4 based on the fact that he was landing the harder and much cleaner landing shots, and he was the guy pushing the action all night long. Saunders was running around the ring, holding like mad, and slapping with his punches. Ryder really dominated the last 6 rounds of the fight with his aggression and power.

I don’t know where Saunders can go with this win. I mean, he’s not going to be able to beat the good middleweights in the division, and I doubt that the guys are going to want to come to the UK to fight him and risk finding themselves on the receiving end of a controversial decision.

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Dereck Chisora (18-4, 12 KO’s) stopped German Edmund Gerber (23-2, 14 KO’s) in the 5th round to win the vacant EBU heavyweight title.

Chisora landed combinations against the tired Gerber in the 5th round resulting in the referee halting the fight.

Chisora was hurt in the 4th round by Gerber, but he was able to make it out of the round when Gerber stopped throwing punches.

As good as Chisora looked in the fight in terms of conditioning, he would have likely been in deep, deep trouble had he been facing someone with big time power that was throwing punches back at him. Gerber wasn’t a big puncher, that was clear from the start of the fight. But Gerber was still able to hurt Chisora in the 4th round when he nailed him with a hard right hand to the head. If this had been Deontay Wilder in the ring against Chisora instead of the light hitting Gerber, I have little doubts that Chisora would have been knocked out well before the 4th round.

The BoxNation talking heads were blabbering about Chisora getting a title shot against Wladimir Klitschko off of this win, but they’re kidding themselves if they think this win will lead to a title shot against Wladimir. Let’s not get it twisted.

Chisora is still not ranked in the top 15 in the world rankings, and Wladimir isn’t going to do Chisora any favors by giving him a title shot based off of a nothing win over a non top 15 ranked Gerber. It’ll take a lot more than beating a little known German fighter for Chisora to get a title shot against Wladimir. Gerber is ranked below Manuel Charr, and that kind of tells you who Chisora beat tonight.

Yes, it was disappointing to see Chisora get hurt by Gerber tonight because this was someone that Chisora was supposed to easily beat.

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Other boxing results:

Billy Joe Saunders UD 12 John Ryder
Frankie Gavin UD 12 David Barnes
Liam Walsh MD 12 Joe Murray
Paul Butler UD 12 Miguel Gonzalez
Dmitry Chudinov pts 8 Max Maxwell