Barrera defeats Murat; Magomedov destroys Tavaria – results

By Boxing News - 12/12/2015 - Comments

barreraBy Allan Fox: Unbeaten #7 IBF Sullivan Barrera (17-0, 12 KOs) earned the right to fight IBF 175lb champion Sergey Kovalev tonight in stopping #13 IBF Karo Murat (27-3-1, 17 KOs) in the 5th round in a scheduled 12 round IBF title eliminator fight at the Civic Auditorium, in Glendale, California, USA.

Barrera unloaded with a storm of shots against a hurt 32-year-old Murat in the 5th round until referee Wayne Hedgpeth halted the fight at 0:25 of the round. Murat wasn’t fighting back the way he needed to in order to keep the referee from jumping in to stop the fight. Murat was also down in the 4th.

Barrera will now be fighting Kovalev at some point. The way Barrera looked tonight, I don’t think he’ll be successful against Kovalev. He needs to raise his game to beat Kovalev. The fight should take place at some point in 2016. That’s going to be a very difficult fight for Barrera to try and win, because his entire game is built on punching power. Barrera doesn’t have the kind of punching power that Kovalev possesses. Barrera also isn’t that fast, so he can’t depend on hand speed to help him like it did Jean Pascal in his fight with Kovalev earlier this year. Barrera is like a slow version of Pascal, and that means he’s not going to be able to stand up too well against Pascal.

It’s really unfortunate that Barrera didn’t face a stiff test in this IBF eliminator by facing unbeaten Artur Beterbiev because I think that would have weeded out one of these two guys in the hunt for a world title fight against Kovalev. At least we’d know where one of them stands. The way it is now, Barrera is getting the title shot against Kovalev by default because of him facing such a weak opponent in Murat.

YouTube video

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Undefeated #6 WBA middleweight contender Arif “The Mayhem” Magomedov (17-0, 10 KOs) stayed ubbeaten with a 7th round knockout win over an over-matched Jonatan “Oso” Tavira (12-4, 9 KOs). The fight was stopped at 0:55 of the 7th following a knockdown. Tavira also hit the deck in the 4th.

Magomedov looked pretty good. He a looked a lot better than #5 WBA Gary “Spike” O’Sullivan, who was beaten earlier tonight by #1 WBA Chris Eubank Jr. in a fight that took place at the O2 Arena in London, UK. Magomedov was impressive in dominating Tavria from start to finish.

The referee took a point off from Magomedov in the 6th for pulling down on Tavira’s head.

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Unbeaten junior middleweight Egis Kavaliauskas (11-0, 10 KOs) destroyed Pablo Mungia (21-10-1, 12 KOs) by a 2nd round knockout. The time of the stoppage was at 1:10 of the 2nd round.

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147lb fighter Francisco Santana (23-4-1, 11 KOs) defeated Arman Ovsepyan (14-6, 11 KOs) by a 6th round stoppage. Santana unloaded on Ovsepyan with a storm of shots in the 6th round, which ended with the referee stepping in to halt the mismatch at 2:37 of the round.

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Junior middleweight Aleksander Besputin (1-0, 1 KOs) defeated Fernando Paliza (5-2, 5 KOs) by a 2nd round knockout. Besputin dropped Paliza in the 2nd. The referee then stepped in and halted the fight at 2:59 of the round.

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Konstantin Kupianskii (1-0) defeated Reggie Young (0-2) by a 4 round unanimous decision by the scores of 40-36, 40-36 and 40-36.



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