By Erik Schmidt: Welterweight Oliver Guettel (13-1, 7 KOs) overcame a 1st round knockdown to come back and defeat Ilian Aries (14-2, 8 KOs) by a 10-round unanimous decision to win the WBC World Youth welterweight title on Friday night at the Ballhaus Arena, Aschersleben, in Sachesen-Anhalt, Germany. Guettel, 23, started off well in the first round, landing jabs and left hooks to the head of Aries, 22. However, just when it appeared to be an easy round for Guettel, Aries, the harder puncher of the two, landed a big left hand that knocked Guettel back into the ropes, where he hung there for a moment, nearly defenseless until the referee stopped the action and counted it as a knockdown. Aries, however, was unable to finish Guettel off despite unloading everything but the kitchen sink on him trying to taking him out.
Guettel looked good in rounds two through six, using a constant jab to prevent Aries from setting up his own offense. Aries continued to be the aggressor, but he was finding it increasingly difficult to make it beyond Guettel’s excellent jab, which was being driven into his face over and over again seemingly without stop. Guettel’s power was nothing to speak of, and probably couldn’t break an egg, but his boxing skills were superb. In the 3rd round, Guettel’s mouth piece was knocked out by a hard right hand from Aries, something that would have a couple of more times in the fight, making Aries angry, for it seemed to occur just when Guettel was taking some particularly hard shots.
Aries seemed to look as if he felt that Guettel was doing it on purpose, perhaps to escape the heavy pressure from the hard-punching Aries. Whatever the case, the referee never deducted any points from Guettel for doing this. Aries continued to stalk Guettel, landing heavy shots whenever he could get past his jab. By the 5th round, Guettel was cut badly on the side of his left eyes, bleeding all over the place, For his part, both of Aries’ eyes were badly swollen from the countless jabs that Guettel had hit him with.
In rounds six and seven, Guettel continued with his domination of Aries, skillfully jabbing him and hitting him with perfect left hooks to the head. There seemed to be nothing that Aries could do to get back into the fight, because he just didn’t seem to have enough skills to match up with Guettel in any department besides power, and that wasn’t working because Aries couldn’t get close enough to land much of the time.
In the eighth round, Guettel suddenly began to look very tired, his punching losing much of the little steam that he had. At the same time, his cut had gotten worse and was bleeding all across his face, making him look as if he’d been in a serious car wreck. Near the end of the round, Guettel came charging forward with his head down and rammed into Aries like a Billy goat, causing Aries to get angry and complain to the referee. Guettel had been fighting like this in many of the rounds previously and had already rammed heads with Aries more than once. This time, Aries got angry about it and after complaining to the referee, he fought enraged for the last minute of the round, hitting Guettel with some monstrous shots in the process.
In rounds nine and ten, Aries continued to land more and more of his shots, whereas Guettel seemed to be just trying to survive, running often and stinking up the joint. In the 9th, a tired Guettel threw a wild left hook that tagged the referee, causing the huge audience to burst into laughter. In the 10th round, Aries hurt Guettel with two huge right hands that drove him off the ropes like a yo-yo. However, Guettel spent the rest of the round running, preventing Aries from trying to land any additional shots.
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