By Erik Schmidt: In what has to be one of the worst decisions I’ve ever witnessed in my life, undefeated super middleweight Denis Inkin (34-0, 24 KOs) defeated Fulgencio Zuniga (21-3-1, 18 KOs) by a 12-round unanimous decision to win the vacant WBO super middleweight title (formerly held by Joe Calzaghe) on Saturday night at the Color Line Arena, Altona, in Hamburg, Germany. The final judges’ scores were 117-110, 116-112 and 118-110. However, Inkin, 30, originally from Russia and now living in Germany, appeared to win only one round in the fight, the first, and badly lose all the remaining rounds.

Zuniga, 31, ranked #13 in the World Boxing Organization, out-landed Inkin approximately eight to one in every round with power shots, and seemed for the most part to be the only one really punching for vast stretches in the fight. Inkin, the number #3 ranked super middleweight in the WBO, mostly jabbed and occasionally fired off a right hand, although each time he would land anything significant, Zuniga would answer back with a flurry of power shots to the head and body. The German crowd, obviously favoring their home fighter, screamed like mad each time that Inkin would land a punch, making it seem as if he was doing much than he was. In fact, he was getting hit with a tremendous amount of shots in between his occasional jabs and right hands. In a way, the fight was like watching a typical Felix Sturm fight, in which he’s getting badly out-landed and outworked by his opponent, yet the crowd is screaming like wild animals, and obviously having an influence on the judging of the bout.

Let me tell you, Inkin in no way deserved to get the win over Zuniga, and the best that I could give him, and I’m being generous here, is one round. All the other rounds were monstrously one-sided with Zuniga slugging away at Inkin like a punching bag, hitting him over and over again to the head and body. Zuniga has a reputation for having one of the best work rates in boxing, and it takes a special type of fighter, like Kelly Pavlik, to beat him. Inkin, however, wasn’t anywhere near special, and fought in a minimalist type manner, rarely throwing anything and take a lot of punishment.

In the first round, Zuniga, from Colombia, was all over Inkin, tagging him with combinations and not letting up on him one bit. However, Inkin did well to create some space and landed some good jabs and a couple of hard rights. Even though he was out-landed by at least six to one in the round, I gave him the round because the fans were screaming so loudly that I figured that the judges would never give Zuniga the round with that much racket going on. In reality, however, Zuniga easily won this round as well as far as I’m concerned.

In rounds two through ten, Zuniga completely dominated the fight, pressuring Inkin and not giving him any room to throw his jabs – his main weapon – or his right hands. It was like watching a replay of Zuniga’s fight with Victor Oganov, who he destroyed in a 9th round TKO in September 2007, in which Zuniga threw nearly nonstop punches and gave an outclassed Oganov a terrible beating. The same applied in this fight, as Inkin’s face began turning a bright red by the 8th from all the punches he was forced to eat from Zuniga. He tried the best he could to slow Zuniga down, but his robotic way of fighting and his poor work rate didn’t allow him to keep Zuniga off him. Unlike Pavlik, who has monstrous power and was able to eventually stop Zuniga on cuts, Inkin didn’t have nearly enough power to cause Zuniga to back off.

In rounds ten through twelve, Zuniga punished Inkin badly with power shots, hitting him with three and four-punch combinations repeatedly in the round. It was more of a case of one nonstop thrashing similar to the style of Aaron Pryor used to give to his opponents. For his part, Inkin only threw a few punches in each round, and looked beaten and tired. The crowd, however, still reacted like crazy whenever he did throw something, screaming as if he was doing well. He wasn’t, though, not unless you consider getting clobbered almost endlessly a good job.

You got to feel more than a little sorry for Zuniga, because he did way more than enough to get the victory and should have won the fight by a landslide decision from what I saw of the fight. I honestly can’t remember seeing a worst decision in my life than this one. If you’ve seen the Sturm-De La Hoya fight or the Lennox Lewis vs. Evander Holyfield I fights, believe me, this fight was a much worse decision than either of those by far.