By Nate Anderson: Lightweight prospect George Watson (5-1-1) fought to a four-round draw with Jon Baguley (8-11-1, 4 KOs) on Friday night at the Kelvin Hall, in Glasgow, Scotland. Referee Paul Graham scored the fight 38-38.
However, I had Watson easily winning the fight three rounds to one based on his more effective punching and harder body shots. Watson, a tall 6’0” lightweight, has a significant amount of work to do on his defense, for it was essentially nonexistent during the fight and caused him to get hit far too many times by Baguley. In addition, Watson tends to stand straight up, failing to use upper body or head movement to avoid incoming shots.
For a fighter as tall as he is, he rarely used his height advantage during the fight, throwing few jabs, and tending to stand at close range to the shorter Baguley, electing to slug it out. In the first round, both fighters came out with huge punches flying. Watson landed well with combinations to the body and head.
However, he was caught by several huge right hands late in the round by Baguley, snapping his head back from the impact of the big shots. Watson, 24, didn’t even try to block many of the shots, so intent he was on trying to get his own big shots in.
In the second round, Watson, perhaps having been given some good advice while in his corner, came out with more upper body and head movement and looked much better. However, he continued to stand in close to the shorter Baguley, looking to land big body and head shots. Indeed, when Watson was landing his punches, he looked very impressive with his power and form.
Unfortunately, he rarely covered up and continued to get hit with hard counter shots from Baguley in between landing his own punches. I had Watson easily winning this round despite getting clipped with a number of big shots from Baguley.
Watson landed many more shots, and most of them harder than the punches that Baguley was landing. In the 3rd round, both fighters began to tire out, looking sloppy and missing often with big wild swings. Watson looked impressive in the first half of the round, pressuring Baguley and hitting him with good right hands to the head.
However, in the second half of the round Baguley came on and landed some hard right hands that snapped Watson’s head back. Still, though, I felt that Watson did more than enough in the first half to win the round in my view.
The 4th round was clearly a round that Watson won, for he landed well with hard body and head shots and did well to avoid Baguley’s wild swings. By this time, Baguley was totally exhausted, and both his punch output and form had deteriorated badly.
In the end, like I said, I had Watson winning easily. However, he needs a lot of work before he’ll be good enough to contend against the better fighters in the lightweight division. His defense is terrible, and he also needs a lot of work with his footwork.