By Aaron Klein: Former International Boxing Federation welterweight champion Kermit Cintron (30-2, 27 KOs) defeated former IBF light welterweight title holder Lovemore N’dou (46-11-1, 31 KOs) by a harder than expected 12-round unanimous decision on Saturday night in a IBF welterweight title eliminator at the Vanderbilt University Memorial Gymnasium, in Nashville, Tennessee.
Cintron, 29, used his three inch height advantage to control the shorter 5’8” N’dou, who was moving up from the light welterweight division for the bout. In the end, N’dou’s lack of size was the telling factor in the fight, as he was just too small and weak to contend with the stronger, larger Cintron.
At light welterweight, N’dou is considered a powerful puncher, but his strength didn’t appear to follow him up to the welterweight division, as he looked too small to be successful against Cintron. The final judges’ scores were 117-110, 115-112 and 117-111.
The fight was marred by the constant clinches initiated by N’dou, which made the bout almost unwatchable at times. Indeed, N’dou probably should have been docked points for the constant holding because it slowed the action down and prevented Cintron from putting together much more than a handful of punches at a time without being foiled by N’dou’s constant clinching.
I personally only gave N’dou one round in the fight, the first, as he was out-worked, out-landed and hit with the much harder punches from rounds two through twelve.
N’dou, 37, fought well in the first round, as he came out fast, landing some hard left hooks to the head of Cintron. Even then, though, Cintron looked to be too big for N’dou, and wasn’t bothered by the shorter fighter’s weaker shots.
In the second round, Cintron began connecting with big uppercuts to the head and hooks to the body. In the third round, Cintron received a small nick over his left eye after clashing heads with N’dou. The two would continue bumping heads throughout the fight due to N’dou’s constant lunging attacks, in which he could come flying in head first and bump into Cintron.
The action was easily controlled by Cintron, who poured in hooks and hard rights to the head. N’dou landed shots on occasion but he was much less active than Cintron was. In the 4th round, N’dou clinched constantly and the fight began to become unwatchable.
In the 5th, N’dou was warned for leading with his head by the referee. Cintron continued pounding him with hooks and uppercuts to the head. Cintron’s right eye was beginning to swell by this time after banging heads with N’dou a couple of times in the round.
Cintron’s face was now red, but it seemed to be more of the case from the head butts rather than the punches of N’dou. In rounds six through nine, Cintron nailed N’dou frequently with big uppercuts and right hands to the head.
To his credit, N’dou took the shots well without getting hurt. It’s unclear whether he would have been able to continue to take Cintron’s big punches if he wasn’t clinching him all the time, because this often gave N’dou frequent breaks from his power shots. N’dou’s own offense had withered to almost a trickle, landing only on rare occasions.
His main goal, it seemed, was to survive and not get knocked out by Cintron. At that, N’dou proved very capable. In rounds ten through twelve, the fight became totally dull, as Cintron winded up with power shots, but was clinched often by N’dou.
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