By Michael Lieberman: Junior middleweight contender Evans Ashira (29-3, 15 KOs) stopped former EBU middleweight champion Mamadou Thiam (42-7, 39 KOs) in the 6th round of a scheduled 12-round bout to win the vacant Universal Boxing Organization InterContinental Light Middleweight at the Frederikssund Hallen, in Frederikssund, Denmark. Ashira, a former super middleweight title challenger, ended matters with a flurry of punches in the 6th round catching Thiam with a big left hook to the head that sent him to the canvas. Referee Soren Saugmann then stopped the fight at 1:05 of the 6th round.
Both fighter traded huge bombs in the opening two rounds, with neither fighter taking a backwards step for a second. Thiam, a knockout artist accustomed to scoring quick KOs in the early rounds, appeared to get the better of Ashira in the first round, hitting him with big uppercuts and hooks to the head. Ashira showed a good chin, taking the shots without showing signs if being hurt.
Ashira came back strong in the 2nd round, though he still continued to walk into tremendous uppercuts from Thiam. Near the end of the round, Ashira landed well with a number of hard hooks to the head of Thiam.
In the third round, Thiam was beginning to show signs of fatigue, some of it likely due to his age but more of it because of the particularly fast pace of the bout. He was still winding up with tremendous hooks, hitting Ashira often but also missing in spectacular fashion as well. He was making no bones about wanting to try and knock Ashira out, even if it meant that he’d tire out quickly in the process. It was a bad gamble on Thiam’s part, for Ahsira, if anything, has an excellent chin and can take a good shot without going down.
In the 4th and 5th rounds, Thiam’s output dropped off dramatically, as he was now only occasionally throwing punches whereas before it was nonstop. Still, even under these circumstances, the power of Thiam’s shots were still quite dangerous against a fighter with a lesser chin than Ashira. For his part, Ashira was landing hard blows, though not as hard as Thiam’s shots, they were close enough to make it negligible. Ashira wasn’t showing any signs of wearing down which wasn’t a good thing for Thiam.
It was all Ashira in the 6th round, hitting Thiam with left hooks, straight rights and combinations. Finally, Ashira put together an excellent flurry of shots while Thiam was on the ropes, hitting him with a left hook to the side of the head that dropped him to the canvas where he was immediately counted out.
Ashira looks much better at light middleweight compared to middleweight, a weight he looked to be too small to fight at. It’s too bad that he waited so long in his career to make this move because he could have been a force several years ago and perhaps already would have won a title or two. As it is, he’s very dangerous for most of the top contenders in the division though it’s unclear whether he was the talent still to win a title.
Thiam, 36, at one time in his career was one of the hardest punchers in the middleweight division. However, he failed in his biggest attempt to acquire a title, losing by a 3rd round TKO to Felix Trinidad in July 2000 in an attempt for the WBA title.