By Jeff Aranow: #3 IBF Jarrett Hurd (20-0, 14 KOs) scored a controversial 9th round knockout over #2 IBF Tony Harrison (24-2, 20 KOs) to capture the vacant IBF junior middleweight title on Saturday night on Premier Boxing Champions on Fox from the Legacy Arena in Birmingham, Alabama.
Hurd knocked Harrison down with a scorching right hand to the head in round 9. Harrison made it back to his feet at the count of 9. However, the referee halted the fight when Harrison spit his mouthpiece out. It looked like Harrison was spitting his mouthpiece out in a move to buy some times. The referee instead stopped the contest, giving Hurd the victory.
It was definitely a controversial stoppage. The trainers for both fighters came into the center of the ring. The only thing you can try explain the referee stopping the fight is perhaps he thought Harrison didn’t’ want to continue fighting. The official time of the stoppage was at 2:24 of round 9. There’s no question that the right hand that Hurd dropped Harrison down with was a huge shot in the 9th.
Hurd lost many of the early rounds of the fight. Harrison appeared to win the first six rounds. The fight began to change in the 7th, as Hurd nailed Harrison with a big right uppercut in the last minute or the round that staggered him. That shot seemed to zap the energy out of Harrison, because he wasn’t the same fighter after taking that shot.
In round 8, Hurd had the 26-year-old Harrison hurt in the final minute of the round after nailing him with a big right hand. Harrison had been fighting well in the round until getting hurt once again. It was strange, because he went from fighting well to being hurt in a blink of an eye.
At the start of round 9, Harrison was putting his shots together well in nailing Hurd with right hands to the head. It looked like Harrison had gotten his second wind, and was starting to take over the fight once again. However, Harrison made the mistake of letting Hurd get too close to him, and he nailed him with a right hand to the head that dropped him flat on his back on the canvas. The back of Harrison’s head bounced off the canvas when he fell down. It was a knockdown in which Harrison didn’t even attempt to brace his fall when he was going down.
Those are the worst type of knockouts in boxing.
The loss for Harrison was very similar to his 9th round knockout defeat to the big punching Willie Nelson on July 11, 2015. Like tonight’s fight, Harrison was dominating the action though eight rounds. Harrison seemed to gas out in the 9th and got nailed by a big shots from Nelson for the knockout loss. There’s not much you can do in cases of fighters that gas out other than having them work on their stamina and making sure they don’t stand in front of their opponents like Harrison was doing against Hurd in the 9th.
The win for Hurd makes him the new International Boxing Federation junior middleweight champion. This is the title that Jermall Charlo just vacated. He moved up to middleweight. Charlo vs. Hurd would have been a great fight. Unfortunately that fight isn’t going to happen unless Hurd moves up to middleweight too in the future. That might not be a good idea while Gennady Golovkin is holding most of the titles in the division.
Harrison needs to go back to the drawing board and try and figure out why he keeps getting stopped late. It looked more than anything like Harrison just didn’t have the gas to continue fighting at a high level that he was in the first six rounds. Harrison was making Hurd look really bad until the 7th.
