Sprott beats Gavern, captures Prizefighter

By Boxing News - 11/14/2013 - Comments

sprott44By Scott Gilfoid: British high level journeyman heavyweight Michael Sprott (40-21, 17 KO’s) took advantage of an elbow injury to his opponent journeyman Jason Gavern (24-17-3, 11 KO’s) to capture the heavyweight Prizefighter tournament and the winning cash of £32,000 on Thursday night at the York Hall, Bethnal Green, in London, United Kingdom.

The judges scored it 29-28, 30-27 and 30-27 in favor of Sprott. The 30-27 scores were laughable because Gavern had really dominated Sprott in the 2nd round and had him hurt. In the 3rd round, Gavern injured his right elbow early in the round and was unable to throw any punches with his right hand for the remainder of the fight. The fact that two of the judges gave Sprott every round was just so, so sad. It means that Sprott would have still won the fight even if Gavern had dominated the 3rd round like he done in the 2nd. That was some god awful scoring. I think I could have scored the fight better with a blindfold on and just guessing, because that’s how poor the two judges scorecards were that gave Sprott the win 30-27.

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In the semifinals, 45-year-old James Toney (76-9-3, 45 KO’s) lost a 3 round majority decision to Jason Gavern. Toney fought well, but he failed to throw enough punches to get the decision. Gavern was constantly screaming to the crowd and getting them on his side in the fight. I scored the fight a draw because I was able to ignore Gavern’s playing to the crowd.

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In other semifinals action, Michael Sprott defeated Brian Minto (38-7, 24 KO’s) by a 3 round unanimous decision. The scores were 29-28, 29-28 and 29-28 for Sprott. I thought Sprott should have had points deducted for all the ugly holding he was doing. I thought I was watching one of Wladimir Klitschko’s fights with all the holding Sprott was doing an getting away with.

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Here are the full Prizefighter results on the card:

Michael Sprott UD 3 Jason Gavern
Michael Sprott UD 3 Brian Minto
Jason Gavern MD 3 James Toney
Brian Minto MD 3 Tom Little
Michael Sprott UD 3 Damian Wills
Jams Toney TKO 3 Matt Legg
Jason Gavern UD 3 Larry Olubamiwo

Before the finals of the Prizefighter, British heavyweight Novice Anthony Joshua (3-0, 3 KO’s) stopped a much smaller, much slower and much weaker Hrvoje Kisicek (5-7, 1 KO’s) in the 2nd round. An impressive performance, it was not. Joshua was pushing his punches for two rounds, showing both a lack of hand speed and a lack of power. He was able to knock Kisicek down with a right hand in the 2nd round. Joshua then stormed Kisicek and threw a series of arm punches until the referee stepped in and stopped the fight, albeit a little too prematurely for my tastes.

Kisicek was perfectly fine at the time of the stoppage and he was just waiting out Joshua’s flurry of weak-looking arm punches so that he could get his own chance to throw some shots. As for the knockdown, it was more of a situation where Kisicek was off balance after getting hit with a left hand so that when Joshua fired a right hand right after that, it knocked Kisicek. He wasn’t hurt though, and I was kind of surprised to see Joshua bum rush Kisicek and throw everything but the kitchen sink at him at that point. If that would have been a good heavyweight, I think Joshua would have been knocked out because he forgot completely about his defense and just stood directly in front of Kisicek throwing arm punch after arm punch.



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