Crawford beats Beltran by boring decision; Gradovich-Velez fight to draw

By Dan Ambrose: WBO lightweight champion Terence Crawford (25-0, 17 KOs) successfully defended his WBO title tonight in beating #1 WBO Raymundo Beltran (29-7-1, 17 KOs) by an incredibly boring 12 round unanimous decision on Saturday night at the CenturyLink Center, in Omaha, Nebraska, USA. The judges scored the fight 119-109, 119-109 and 120-108, all for Crawford.

As much as I liked Crawford’s performance tonight, I must say it was one of the most boring performances I’ve seen from a champion in some time. When you note that HBO is no longer televising Guillermo Rigondeaux’s fights on their network, it makes you wonder why, because he’s arguably a much entertaining fighter to watch than Crawford.

Crawford is wise to fight in his hometown of Omaha, because with the way he fights, I believe he’d be booed anywhere else. I still remember how he was booed when he beat Breidis Prescott in 2013 in their fight in Las Vegas, Nevada. I think Crawford would have been booed nonstop if he’d fought Beltran in Las Vegas tonight instead of Nebraska, because this was just an incredibly boring fight to watch in my view.

Watching tonight’s fight was like watching paint dry. Crawford moved constantly, and was tying Beltran up each time he would get within range to throw his power shots. Crawford was totally defensive for the most part. To be sure, Crawford did start throwing some punches later in the fight in the last couple of rounds, but even then he was still moving and tying Beltran up to negate his offense. It was just very, very, very boring to watch in my view.

I suppose Top Rank promoter Bob Arum will eventually match Crawford against Manny Pacquiao in the future, but I see their fight being a replay of the first Pacquiao vs. Timothy Bradley fight with Crawford moving constantly. I can see that fight being a very boring fight.

***

In controversial decision, the judges scored the bout between IBF featherweight champion Evgeny Gradovich (19-0-1, 9 KOs) and Jayson Velez (22-0-1, 16 KOs) a 12 round draw. They scored the fight 117-111 for Gradovich, 115-113 for Velez and 114-114 even. Gradovich appeared to win every round from the 5th round against a tired and beaten Velez. How the judges could score the fight a draw is anyone’s guess. It just looked like a case of poor scoring by two of the judges. I think the 117-111 score in favor of Gradovich was a very fair score.

Other boxing action on the card:

Alex Saucedo UD 6 Daniel Calzada
Johnny Determan TKO 3 Manuel Galaviz
Bernard Davis TKO 2 Bryan Timmons