By Eric Schmidt: World Boxing Association super middleweight champion Anthony Mundine (31-3, 23 KOs) won a lopsided 12-round unanimous decision on Wednesday night against his Australian challenger Nader Hamdan (40-6, 18 KOs) at the Entertainment Centre, in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The bout had little suspense, as Mundine, 32, easily defeated Hamden, who came into the bout having lost three out of his last five bouts, though remarkably still ranked as high as #15 in the WBA despite all the recent losses. Mundine controlled every round of the fight, blasting the stubborn, but badly overmatched, Hamden with left hooks and straight right hands round after round.
Hamden, 34, kept coming forward, though, but mostly throwing weak shots to the body which did little to make the fight competitive. The final judges’ scores were 117-111, 120-108 and 119-109, all for Mundine. I had Mundine winning every round of the fight. He seemed to relax a bit in the 10th and 11th rounds, but Hamden hardly had the power or skills to take advantage of it Mundine easing up on him, and still appeared to lose both rounds by a wide margin. This was Mundine’s third title defense of his WBA super middleweight title in which he won in March 2007 with a 9th round TKO of Sam Soliman.
Incredibly, however, Mundine has yet to face a hard challenger, instead going up against Pablo Daniel Zamora Nievas, Jose Alberto Clavero and now Hamden. Missing are names like Edison Miranda, Jean Pascal, and Jean Paul Mendy, to name just a few opponents that I consider much better than the utterly soft opposition that Mundine has chosen to defend his title against so far.
In rounds one through six, Mundine controlled the fight with his fast hands, tagging Hamden with left hooks and straight rights to the head. Both Mundine’s hook and right hand are excellent punches, thrown very hard and with perfect form. Hamden had no answer for the shots, other than to keep plodding forward and throwing body shots. It was a bad strategy, because it had no effect on Mundine, and it wasn’t keeping Hamden in the fight. However, he stubbornly stuck to the same fight plan even though he was taking a vicious pounding from Mundine. By the sixth round, Mundine really began to tee-off on Hamden, hitting him for sustained periods with combinations while Hamden was stuck trying to cover up on the ropes.
In rounds seven through twelve, Mundine stepped it up a notch, throwing many more 1-2 shots to the head of Hamden. In rounds seven, eight and nine, Hamden was hurt by shots from Mundine which came about when Hamden was standing near the ropes attempting to block punches. However, in each case, Hamden came charging back and landed weak flurries of body shots that had Mundine backing up. Both fighters traded shot for shot in rounds ten though twelve, making the rounds somewhat interesting to watch. Hamden’s lack of power was his ultimate downfall, for if he had a little more power he may have been able to make the fight much closer than it ended up.
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