By Scott Gilfoid: French cruiserweight Jean Marc Monrose (24-1, 15 KOs) overwhelmed champion Johny Jensen (23-1-2, 10 KOs), stopping him in the 1st round on Saturday night to win the EBU (European) cruiserweight title at the Palais des Sports, Marseille, in Bouches-du-Rhone, France. Ranked #8th in the WBA cruiserweight division, Monrose, 26, immediately pounced on the Danish Jensen from the opening bell, bum rushing him and hitting him with a huge left hook to the head.
After a flurry of shots, which saw Jensen visit the canvas once, the referee stepped in and halted the fight at 1:30 of the 1st round, with Jensen taking severe punishment against the ropes. Jensen looked battered, his left eye swollen and he seemed disoriented, as if he didn’t know what had hit him. Perhaps he wasn’t figuring that Monrose would start out so quickly, Jensen never could make any adjustments to counteract Monrose’s furious first round attack and ended up losing badly to the French fighter.
Early in the first round, Jensen attempted to get his distance from the shorter-armed Monrose, jabbing him several times to the head top start the fight. However, Monrose immediately came flying after him and tagged him with a big right hand and left hook to the head. Jensen attempted to initiate a clinch, but even in the clinch, Monrose feed up his left hand and repeatedly clubbed Jensen to the face a number of times. Once the two fighters were separated, Monrose bored in on him, looking like a smaller version of Samuel Peter, and proceeded to nail him with arcing shots that landed to the back of Jensen’s head.
The first punch, a perfectly thrown right hand rabbit shot, appeared to badly hurt Jensen, for which he seemed to never recover from. Monrose, seeing a pefect opportunity to attack a stricken fighter, really unloaded on Jensen, hitting him with a flurry of shots, and again appeared to nail Jensen with another right hand rabbit shot. By then it didn’t matter, because Jensen was badly hurt and any punch that hit him was going to cause him problems of the first order. For several seconds, Monrose continued to pour in punishment, hitting Jensen with uppercuts and hooks and manhandling him on the inside.
Finally, Monrose dropped Jensen with a big left hook to the head. Jensen got to his feet on rubbery legs, his left eye badly swelling underneath and showing signs of angry redness. The referee looked Jensen over and allowed the fight to continue. Monrose immediately started in as if nothing had changed, hitting him with left-right combinations, uppercuts, straight lefts, you name it. He was really plastering Jensen, who all he could so was try and cover up against the ropes, trying to wait out Monrose’s attack.
Jensen wasn’t even thinking of returning fire, so busy was he taking shots from Monrose. What he should have been thinking is clinch, which he never tried to do after getting hurt. The referee finally had seen enough, not wanting to see a defenseless Jensen get pounded on any further, and stepped in and halted the slaughter at 1:30 of the 1st round.