Saunders defeats Blandamura; Eubank Jr obliterates Jukic in 1st round KO

By Boxing News - 07/26/2014 - Comments

saundersBy Scott Gilfoid: Unbeaten Billy Joe Saunders (20-0, 11 KO’s) stayed undefeated tonight in stopping 34-year-old Italian fringe contender Emanuele Blandamura (22-1, 5 KOs) in the 8th round to capture the vacant European middleweight title at the Phones 4U Arena in Manchester, UK.

Due to heavyweight Tyson Fury pulling out of his scheduled fight against Alexander Ustinov due to a family illness, the Saunders-Blandamura fight was moved up to the main event. Saunders struggled badly with the faster Blandamura until hitting him with a wild right hand in the 8th round that had the Italian out on his feet.

Blandamura staggered to the ropes where he leaned against them helplessly. The referee, being slow to process what had just happened, moved in a little too slowly to keep Saunders from landing one right hand to the head of the helpless Blandamura before the fight was finally halted. Blandamura was still on his feet at the time the bout was stopped.

After the fight, #3 WBO, #5 WBC, #8 IBF Saunders wasted time talking about the unranked Chris Eubank Jr instead of speaking about a world title shot against one of the champions. It was kind of a weird thing, because normally you don’t get guys ranked as high as Saunders yapping about how they want to fight a prospect, but that’s his thing.

The only thing I could take from that is perhaps Saunders doesn’t fancy his chances against any of the middleweight world champions, so he’s focusing on the lower level guys. In that case, the WBO, WBC and IBF need to adjust their rankings by dropping Saunders from the top 15. If he wants to fight domestic level guys instead of world level, then it’s a waste to have him ranked so highly.

Saunders said this about Eubank Jr: “I don’t need him, but if the fans call for it, we’ll do it if he’s man enough. Frank’s the man to set up the fight.”

***

Middleweight Chris Eubank Jr (17-0, 12 KOs) stopped Ivan Jukic (19-3, 12 KOs) by a 1st round, two-knockdown performance. Without any resistance at all from the light hitting Jukic, Eubank Jr flurried on him shots until dropping him on the canvas. After he was down, Eubank Jr nailed Jukic with a right hand while he was defenseless. Why the referee failed to disqualify Eubank Jr is anyone’s guess. He definitely should have been disqualified because Jukic was clearly down.

The action restarted, and Eubank Jr immediately backed Jukic up to the corner and flurried on him until the referee finally stepped in and halted the fight after Eubank Jr had knocked Jukic down. The referee should have stepped in and halted the fight before Jukic went down because he took some awful punishment when he was helpless against the ropes. It was one of the worst referee jobs I’ve seen. I still can’t believe the referee didn’t hale the fight when Jukic was hanging on the ropes defenseless like a spider.

This was actually a big, big step down for Eubank Jr from his last opponent Stepan Horvath. It’s a weird way of match-making to go backwards with a fighter instead of going forward, but then again, Eubank Jr was hit a lot by Horvath, so I can kind of understand why they might have wanted to match him against a really weak opponent to make Eubank Jr look good again.
After the fight, Chris Eubank Sr said “This man’s [Eubank Jr] going to be better than Floyd Mayweather Jr. He’s going to change the game.”

Eubank Jr said “I’m going to have the British title in my hands in the next four months.”
I didn’t see anything in Eubank Jr’s performance that suggests he’s going to be better than Mayweather Jr tonight. Instead of Mayweather, Eubank Jr reminds me more of a knock off of James DeGale. That’s about all I could see of him in terms of someone to compare him to.

Other results on the card:

Liam Smith TKO 1 Jason Welborn
Terry Flanagan RTD 7 Martin Gethin
Liam Williams TKO 6 Ronnie Heffron



Comments are closed.