By Scott Gilfoid: A hulking #7 WBC lightweight contender Kevin Mitchell (39-2, 29 KOs), who looked like a welterweight in size after rehydrating, destroyed a badly overmatched #6 WBC Daniel Estrada (32-4-1, 24 Ks) in stopping him in the 8th round on Saturday night to win the vacant World Boxing Council Silver lightweight strap in their WBC title eliminator at the O2 Arena in London, UK.
Mitchell hurt Estrada with some hard uppercuts in the 8th and he was pretty much handing it to the Mexican fighter until referee John-Lewis finally did the sensible thing and stopped the fight at 1:12 of the 8th.
What was interesting about this fight was how Estrada had absolutely no defense for Mitchell’s uppercuts. Mexican fighters are known for their ability to negate an uppercut, but Estrada fought like he’d never faced anyone before who threw an uppercut. Mitchell exclusively used that punch tonight after finding out early that Estrada was defenseless against it.
Estrada’s corner really should have halted the fight much earlier, perhaps as early as the 4th round, because it was totally one-sided the entire fight especially from the 3rd round.
Mitchell knocked Estrada down with a big left hook to the head in the 3rd round.
Estrada was getting really pummeled in the 6th and 7th rounds from hard left hooks from Mitchell. Estrada’s right eye was badly swollen up from the left hooks he kept eating. While he did a good job of stopping Mitchell in his tracks at times with his hard body shots, he didn’t have an answer for Mitchell’s left hooks or his jabs. Surprisingly, Mitchell, the shorter man, was able to land his jabs at a higher rate than Estrada.
What’s disturbing is that Estrada was allowed to fight in a WBC eliminator bout against Mitchell despite the fact that Estrada had been knocked out in the 9th round in his last fight by former WBC lightweight champion Omar Figueroa last August. You’d think that the WBC would pick out a guy at least coming off of a victory to face Mitchell instead of a fighter who was recently knocked out.
Mitchell’s promoter Eddie Hearn spoke after the fight about wanting to match Mitchell against WBC lightweight champion Jorge Linares next or WBA champion Richard Abril.
For the most part, Mitchell still looks very easy to hit, but he had the perfect guy to look good against with Estrada, who was little more than a punching bag. Estrada had never beaten anyone that I would call a good fighter, so it’s not surprising that Mitchell beat him. I think Mitchell is going to have huge problems if he gets in the ring with the likes of Linares, Abril or Micky Bey.
***
Other boxing action on the card:
John Ryder TKO 10 Billi Facundo Godoy
Tommy Martin UD 10 Ricky Boylan
Charlie Edwards TKO 4 Craig Derbyshire
Lee Markham TKO 2 Lewis van Poetsch
Ohara Davies TKO 1 Lee Gibbons
Ben Hall pts 6 Ryan Toms
Isaac Chamberlain pts 4 Moses Matovu
Comments are closed.