By Scott Gilfoid: In another questionable stoppage on tonight’s Wembley card, James DeGale (19-1, 13 KO’s) defeated Brandon Gonzales (18-1-1, 10 KO’s) by a 4th round TKO in their IBF super middleweight title eliminator bout. DeGale dropped Gonzales with a left hand to the head after hitting him with a flurry on the inside. It was a very bad stoppage because Gonzales was still able to fight and there was no reason why the referee should have stopped it.
Gonzales got back to his feet and was hit with a left hand to the head that knocked him into the ropes. Gonzales then clinched briefly, and after the two fighters were separated the referee Steve Gray, for strange reason, stopped the fight.
Asked after the fight if he’s ready to fight the winner of the Carl Froch vs. George Groves fight, DeGale said “100 percent.”
Where Gonzales went wrong in the 4th was where he backed straight up after getting hit with a 4-punch flurry from DeGale while they were in close near the ropes. DeGale followed after Gonzales, tagging him with shots while he was backing up. Gonzales was then hit with a left to the head that dropped him. It looked like Gonzales wasn’t expecting DeGale to come after like that, because he didn’t have his guard up at the time and was totally defenseless.
DeGale got away with a lot of holding and hitting in the fight. The referee seemed to be blind to it, and did nothing to stop DeGale from doing in this fight.
Gonzales, who didn’t have much in the way of hand speed, was getting hit a lot by straight left hands by DeGale in the 1st round. He seemed to have problems with DeGale’s southpaw stance as well as his hand speed. In the 2nd round, Gonzales fought a lot better in crowding DeGale and forcing him to fight on the inside. DeGale did a lot of pulling down on Gonzales’ head and hitting him while they were in close. The referee failed to do anything about the holding. Gonzales suffered a cut on the side of his left eye in the round.
In the 3rd round, DeGale moved around a lot to try and keep out of range of Gonzales, but he wasn’t able to keep off of him. Gonzales was constantly on top of DeGale and landed some smart shots to the head and body in the round.
Comments are closed.