By Chet Mills: Former IBF light middleweight champion Kassim Ouma (25-5-1, 15 KOs) was defeated by former star from The Contender reality television series Cornelius Bundrage (28-3, 16 KOs) by a 10-round unanimous decision on Friday night at the Seneca Allegheny Casino & Hotel, in Salamanca, New York. It was spectacular but Brundige, 34, did just enough to squeak by with victory, in large part due to his good early start in the fight. Bundrage, an over-muscled with a huge upper body and little tree twig legs, started out well in the first round as he landed hard right hands. Not a particularly powerful puncher, despite all his muscles, Bundrage still has good power in his right hand. His lack of hand speed and mobility, not to mention his lack of a left hand, are probably his biggest problems.
Ouma, however, couldn’t take advantage of Bundrage’s limitations because he wasn’t letting his hands go enough to push him in the fight. As such, Bundrage easily won the first round with his right hand. Bundrage held his left hand way out in front of his as an exaggerated guard, but in reality he used it to keep Ouma at a distance by pushing him with his left every time he tried to get in punching range. This allowed Bundrage to control the distance while at the same time serving as a measuring stick with which to aim his slow right hand shots.
Much of the first three rounds were spent with Bundrage wrestling Ouma in clinches, where Bundrage’s huge muscles were an asset for him in roughing Ouma up on the inside. Other than that, Brundiges’ huge upper body was a handicap for him, in that it slowed him way down as if he was fighting under water.
In the 4th round, Ouma began landing lefts and right hands threw Bundrage’s guard, tagging him cleanly with shots to the head. The two fighters brushed up against each other early on in the round, leaving Bundrage with a cut over his left eyebrow. This seemed to get Ouma into the fight as he teed off on Bundrage for the rest of the round with shots to the head. At the same time, Bundrage began to fight cautiously, seeming afraid to let his hands go.
In the 5th and 6th, Ouma, fighting much more fluidly than the lumbering muscle bound Bundrage, landed the greater amount of shots in the round and did the more impressive work. Like most fighters with two much muscle, Bundrage appeared to have punched himself out and didn’t seem to have much power in his right hand. His speed had also gotten slower, making it easier for Ouma to cause Bundrage’s shots to miss their mark.
Ouma did little in the 7th round, and for all practical purposes, gave the round away due to his lack of offense. This was a problem he had in his bout with Roman Karmazin in their 2006 bout. There was no excuse for it this time, as Bundrage isn’t as well schooled a fighter as Karmazin and this should have been an easy fight for Ouma.
Bundrage was deducted a point for excessive holding in the 8th round. It was about time, because he’d been holding and wrestling all fight long up to this point and it was way out of hand for what is normal for a boxing match. It wasn’t the typical clinching that you normally see but rather the type in which a fighter is trying to muscle the other fighter all around so he can land short punches on the inside. It would have been okay if it was sporadic but Bundrage was doing it all the time. However, Bundrage was able to make the round even by winning it as for as doing the more work in the round. This made it a 9-9 round rather than him losing it by two, which could have easily happened if Ouma had let his hands go a little more.
With the fight on the line going into the 9th and 10th rounds, Bundrage appeared to pull away from Ouma, once again outwork him with short punches on the inside and catching him coming in with single shots. As before, Ouma’s punch output dropped off to next to nothing, allowing Bundrage to easily win the last two rounds of the fight by default. If Ouma had put up a half way decent fight during this time he could have made it close or likely won the rounds, yet he did essentially nothing.