Cherry Destroys Johnston

By Boxing News - 05/23/2008 - Comments

johnston46443.jpgBy Aaron Klein: Two-time WBC lightweight champion Stevie Johnston (42-6-1, 18 KOs) was stopped in the 10th round by contender Edner Cherry (24-5-2, 12 KOs) on Wednesday night at the House, in Camp Lejuene, North Carolina. After fighting a fairly competitive fight for the first eight rounds of the fight, Johnston appeared to run out of gas two minutes into the 9th round and was subsequently floored by a right hand from Cherry. Johnston would continue to take tremendous punishment for the remainder of the round. In the 10th round, Cherry took his time, stalking Johnston, looking for an opening to throw his right hand. With 30 seconds to go in the round, Cherry finally unleashed a straight right hand that floored Johnston, sending him to the canvas flat on his back. Referee Dale Frye immediately stopped the fight at 2:34, not bothering to count due to the viciousness of the KO.

The action was mostly ugly in rounds one and two, with Cherry landing jabs, moving a lot and doing just enough to win the rounds. Johnston stayed on top of him for the most part, trying to beat Cherry at close range, and looking to smother his power. Johnston perhaps didn’t need to, for Cherry seems to have changed his style somewhat after his lopsided 12-round unanimous decision loss to Paulie Malignaggi in February 2007.

Since that fight, tends to move much more than, using his jab and making a concerted effort to box more. Cherry, perhaps, would have been better off with his old style against Johnston, who seemed too weak and susceptible to big shots to be able to stand and trade shots with Cherry for long. However, it’s good that he’s at least sticking to a game plan and not trying to slug it out like he used to, because he was having mixed results against the better fighters in the division.

In the 3rd round, Johnston was knocked down in the middle of the round by a right hand from Cherry. However, the referee apparently was shielded from the action, and didn’t see that the punch from Cherry never landed and that Johnston had only slipped to the canvas without being hit. It perhaps didn’t matter all that much, other than giving Cherry an additional point that he wouldn’t need, since Cherry ended up winning the round anyway with his more extensive work in the round. Johnston looked good in the last minute, however, and landed some good left hand shots. As usual, Cherry wasn’t hard to hit, as he doesn’t appear to know how to block punches with his gloves and arms.

In the 4th and 5th rounds, Johnston used his superior boxing ability, along with his smothering attack, to win both rounds. By staying close to Cherry, it kept him from getting leverage on his shots and seemed to take a lot of the sting from his blows. On the inside, Johnston was much faster, landing more often and looking almost like his championship form of 1997-2000. When Johnston was going well, he looked a class above Cherry.

However, Johnston began to fade in round six, his 35 year-old legs beginning to show their age, as he was unable to move around the ring like in previous rounds and his punches were beginning to lose speed. Cherry appeared to do a little more in the round, enough to get round due to him having landed a small handful of right hands. Cherry continued to move around a lot, clinch often and look unusually awkward. It was ugly fighting from him, and it looked especially poor in contrast to the highly skilled Johnston, who though tired and looking old, still fought with good form and intelligence.

In the seventh through ninth rounds, Cherry slowed the fight down considerably with his constant side to side movement and numerous clinches. I was briefly keeping track, or at least I was trying to, but I gave up after watching him go beyond the double digits. It seemed like he was doing it with a purpose, though, in that he would rough up Johnston while in close, often pushing him to the ropes where he would throw a short punch in between the wrestling. Like I said, it was ugly to watch, and not particularly skilled fighting that Cherry was doing. It seemed like more of a case of a mugging, than one fighter proving himself as the better fighter as far as I’m concerned. Late in the ninth round, Cherry’s wrestling appeared to have finally worked, as Johnston looked exhausted, his mouth open for breath and his body looking like a wet noodle.

With a minute left in the round, Cherry began to unload first with right hands, then with combinations as Johnston lay helpless against the ropes trying to cover up. Cherry finally landed several hard left hooks that put Johnston on the canvas. He got up, looking hurt, tired and ready to go. Cherry once again tore into him, ripping combinations as the bell ended to signal the end of the 9th round. If not for the bell, I’m fairly certain that the fight would have ended in the next 20-30 seconds.

In the 10th round, Cherry, now looking really confident for the first time in the fight, started bouncing up and down on his toes, moving around the ring needlessly, wasting energy and prolonging the fight. It seemed like Cherry was disconnected from reality or something, for if he had any conscious understanding of how hurt Johnston was , as well as how tired he looked, he would have known that all he had to do is attack him with a flurry of punches and it would be over. Instead, Cherry ran around the ring, changing directions and throwing jabs. Finally, after wasting most of the round, Cherry finally attacked Johnston with 30 seconds to go in the round and flattened him with a straight right hand, pretty much the first real punch that he threw in the round. The referee then stopped the fight immediately, seeing that it wasn’t necessary to count because Johnston was clearly not going to be getting up any time soon.

Going into this fight, this seemed like a competitive matchup on paper, as both Cherry and Johnston were fighters roughly at the same place. Cherry, a popular fighter on ESPN due to his tendency to brawl much of the time, had been beaten several times in the past three years, losing to Randy Quiles, Jose Armando Santa Cruz and most recently to Paulie Malignaggi. Before the fight with Malignaggi, Cherry’s losses had been considered a fluke, something that was more of case of him having an off night. However, against Malignaggi, Cherry was essentially schooled, losing a one-sided 12-round unanimous decision. It was clear that Cherry, though an exciting fighter, just didn’t have that extra missing ingredient that was needed in order to beat the top level fighters in the division. You could put him with a decent B-level fighter, and he’d rip his head off and look like a champion.

As for Johnston, he has been a champion briefly in 1997, losing it a year later to Cesar Bazan in 1998. Though he would regain his title in 1999 with a win over Bazan, Johnston would turn around and lose it again a year later, in 2000, this time to Jose Luis Castillo. Following that loss, Johnston was never able to regain his title, though he did come close by fighting to a 12-round draw with Castillo in September 2000, only three months after having lost his title by a 12-round majority decision in a grueling bout. From that point on, Johnston still remained a good fighter, beating some good fighters, but losing to other higher quality fighters, like Juan Lazcano, Vivian Harris and Rolando Reyes.