By Jim Dower: After taking part in two consectuve controversial bouts, one in which he appeared to lose to Randall Bailey and another where he seemed to get the business in a loss to Paulie Malignaggi, finally Herman Ngoudjo (17-2, 9 KOs) got it right with an impressive 12-round unanimous decision over former WBA light welterweight champion Souleymane M’baye (36-3-1, 21 KOs) on Friday night at the Uniprix Stadium, Montreal, in Quebec, Canada. The win was especially important for the 28 year-old Ngoudjo, originally from Cameroon and now living and fighting out of Montreal, Canada, for it was an IBF eliminator bout, which sets Ngoudjo up as the mandatory for the IBF light welterweight title currently held by Paulie Malignaggi.
Just five months ago, Ngoudjo fought Malignaggi and lost what was a very questionable 12-round decision. Most people, this writer included, thought that Ngoudjo had done more than enough to get the decision over Malignaggi. However, it wasn’t to be. With this win over M’baye, from France, Ngoudjo may will likely get an even better opportunity, especially if Ricky Hatton ends up defeating Malignaggi in their fight later on this year. Ngoudjo, with his fast hands, matches up well with the slower Hatton who typically has problems against fighters with fast hands like Ngoudjo.
As for Friday’s fight, Ngoudjo fought well, using quick flurries and a high work rate to defeat the 33 year-old former champion M’baye. Ngoudjo’s left eye was injured in the 4th round from one of M’baye’s big right hands, and it began steadily swelling shut with each progressing round. By the 8th round, Ngoudjo’s eye was completely shut. Perhaps if this bout hadn’t taken place in Ngoudjo in his home town, the fight would have likely been stopped because of his eye. However, the Canadian doctor didn’t look like he was ever even close to stopping the fight, and it’s a good thing, too. The Canadian crowd would have gone wild and tour the place apart. They had come to see Ngoudjo win, and they looked like they would settle for nothing less than that.
Ngoudjo dominated the action in the first three round, using his jab, quick flurries and high workrate to keep M’baye from getting in his own shots. However, M’baye did land well on occasion, showing excellent power and good range from the outside. Ngoudjo had problems with M’baye every time he would fight on the outside, which is why Ngoudjo made it a point to stay on the inside as much as possible. This allowed the light-punching Ngoudjo to take advantage of his quicker hands to land a lot of shoeshine punches – quick flurries that were thrown with little power, but looked impressive none the less.
In rounds four through six, M’baye controlled the action with his bigger shots. He was still being out-landed by Ngoudjo by a narrow margin, but M’baye’s shots were landing much cleaner and giving Ngoudjo problems. In the 4th round, M’baye nailed Ngoudjo with a right hand on his left eye, immediately causing it to start closing. Ngoudjo seemed bothered by it for the remainder of the round.
For the remainder of the way, in rounds seven though twelve, Ngoudjo seem to change his strategy somewhat, no longer throwing bigger shots like he had in the previous rounds. Instead, he focused entirely on throwing quick flurries which enabled him to take advantage of his best advantage, namely his speed. M’baye not a particularly fast fighter, found himself getting hit a lot and didn’t know how to effectively deal with Ngoudjo’s speedy shots. M’baye continued to load up on shots, like in the previous round, forgetting all about his jab. The was a fatal mistake, because as bad as Ngoudjo’s eye was by the 8th round, completely closed, it wouldn’t have taken much for M’baye to work it over really good with a lot of jabs, and perhaps getting the fight stopped. As it was, M’baye ended up wasting his opportunity by not using his jab to tenderize Ngoudjo’s eye when he had the chance. The final judges’ scores were 117-111, 115-113 and 116-112.