By Jim Dower: Promoter 50 Cent’s fighter IBF featherweight champion Billy Dib (35-2, 21 KO’s) took a real pounding tonight by #11 IBF Evgeny Gradovich (16-0, 8 KO’s), in losing by a 12 round split decision at the MGM Grand at Foxwoods Resort, in Mashantucket, Connecticut, USA.
The final judges’ scores were 114-112 for Gradovich, 114-112 for Dib and 114-112 for Gradovich. It’s hard to imagine which fight the judge was watching that scored the fight for Dib by 114-112 score because it seemed like a clear cut win for Gradovich.
Both fighters were docked a point by referee Eddie Claudio in the 8th for what he felt was too much holding. It didn’t seem like it was that bad, but the referee was really getting in the way of the inside fighting all night long.
Claudio constantly broke up the action when the Russian born Gradovich was trying to mix it up in close. Dib suffered a bad cut in the 11th round over his right eye.
Dib never really looked good in the fight, as he struggled with Gradovich’s pressure from the outset. Dib may have done well enough to win the first couple of rounds, but from the 3rd round Gradovich took over the fight and gave Dib a really tough time.
In the later rounds, Dib was hit constantly by hard shots that snapped his head around. The 10th was particularly bad after Gradovich caught Dib against the ropes and really punished him.
50 Cent is going to have to look to sign up some more fighters because it’s hard to imagine Dib ever capturing another world title at featherweight with the existing champions. He doesn’t match up well against the featherweight champions Mikey Garcia, Chris John and Daniel Ponce De Leon, and definitely not against Gradovich.
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In undercard action, junior middleweight Willie Nelson (20-1-1, 12 KO’s) stopped Michael Medina (26-4-2, 19 KO’s) in the 1st round. Nelson dropped Medina twice in the round with hard right hands to the head. After the second knockdown, Medina injured his right leg while falling down and he had to be helped out of the ring. The fight was stopped at 2:00 of the round.
Other boxing results on the card:
Luis Olivares TKO 1 Rafael Munoz
Shelly Vincent UD 4 Mikayla Nebel
Luis Rosa, Jr. UD 8 Jhovany Collado
Ryan Kielczwski UD 8 Gil Garcia
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