By Jim Dower: The hard hitting #4 IBF Michael Farenas (39-4-4, 31 KOs) was much too powerful for the light hitting #11 IBF Mark Davis (18-1, 5 KO’s) in stopping him in the 8th round on Wednesday night in their IBF super featherweight eliminator bout at the Foxwoods Resort, in Mashantucket, Connecticut, USA.
Farenas hurt Davis with a big left hook to the head in the 8th round that drove him across him staggering across the ring. Referee Steve Smoger then stepped in and stopped the bout at 0:59 of the round.
The ringside doctor had been carefully monitoring Davis’s condition from the 6th round after he took a battering in that round from Farenas in having his nose and lips bloodied. Davis was also cut over his right eye in the 1st.
Davis had the better speed in the fight, and was able to land some nice combinations. However, Farenas was in another league in terms of his power, and it seemed pretty obvious from the 1st round on that Johnson wasn’t going to be able to go the full 12 rounds with Farenas hitting him as hard as he was.
Farenas gave Yuriorkis Gamboa all he could handle two years ago in losing a 12 round unanimous decision in 2012. Farenas knocked Gamboa down hard in the fight, but he was unable to finish him off despite giving it a game effort.
With this victory, Farenas is now the IBF mandatory challenger to Argenis Mendez.
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In a dull co-feature bout, former IBF featherweight champion Billy Dib (37-3, 21 KO’s) defeated Alberto Garza (26-8-1, 21 KO’s) by a 10 round unanimous decision in a fight that had countless head-butts. Dib didn’t look powerful smothering Garza for 10 rounds. The final judges’ scores were 98-91, 96-93 and 96-93. Dib was constantly boring in with his head down in ramming position. It wasn’t pretty to watch. Garza lost a point for holding in the 6th, but other than that it was a pretty uneventful fight.
The featherweight division has improved dramatically since Dib lost his IBF featherweight title last year in March in a defeat to Evgeny Gradovich. If Dib is going to win another world title at featherweight, he’s probably going to need until one of the current champions – Nonito Donaire, Nicholas Walters, Johnny Gonzalez, Gradovich and Vasyl Lomachenko moves up in weight for him to get a shot at winning one of those belts, because he doesn’t match up well against any of them.
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