By Erik Schmidt: Undefeated World Boxing Organization (WBO) light middleweight champion Sergiy Dzinziruk (36-0, 22 KOs) easily defeated Colombian knockout artist Joel Julio (34-2, 31 KOs) by a 12-round unanimous decision on Saturday night at the Koenig Pilsener Arena, in Oberhausen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany. Dzinziruk, 32, had too much skill for the slower, more limited Julio, whom he jabbed at will open Saturday night making the Colombian look like a rank amateur. Julio, 23, had his moments in the earlier rounds in which he was able an occasional power shot against Dzinziruk, but for the most part, Julio was picked off while coming in by Dzinziruk’s hard jabs to the head.

In many ways, the fight was a repeat of Julio’s 12-round point’s loss to Carlos Quintana in June 2006, a fight from which Quintana easily defeated Julio by literally boxing circles around him and making him eat a lot of jabs and counter punches. Following that bout, Julio reeled off seven straight wins, beating the likes of Ishe Smith and Cornelius Bundrage along the way. It was hoped that Julio would have improved enough with his boxing skills to defeat a polished fighter like WBO champion Dzinziruk. However, as it turned out, Julio was beaten just as easily – if not worse – by Dzinziruk as he was by Quintana in 2006.

Part of the problem seemed fairly obvious in the first round against Dzinziruk when Julio would come at him looking the land power shots, but failing to throw jabs while on the way in. It was obviously something that had worked for Julio in his previous seven fights, including much of his career, against the mostly limited opposition he’s faced. However, against Dzinziruk, it was a fatal flaw that he would expose again and again by tagging Julio as he would plod in without a jab or much head movement.

Clearly, Julio was the much harder puncher of the two and the one with the faster hands. But his looping shots were no match for the straight jab and the superior defensive work from Dzinziruk, who picked off many of Julio’s wide shots while hitting him with jabs over and over as he waddled forward. As I mentioned before, Julio fought well in the first four to five rounds, and made the 2nd round very close by landing a small number of power shots.

Likewise, Julio fought extremely well in the 4th round, as he attacked Dzinziruk hard, bum rushing him and throwing a horde of punches, many of which missed badly but enough got through to give him the round on my scorecards. He looked sloppy and amateurish in contrast to Dzinziruk, though, and it seemed even then that he would need to knockout the Ukrainian if he had any hopes of winning the fight.

Unfortunately, Dzinziruk, a former Olympian for Ukraine in the 1996 Olympics, rarely presented himself as a stationary object for Julio to get his shots in against. When Julio would come rushing forward, as he always did, Dzinziruk would paste him with a couple of jabs on the way in, snapping his head back and interrupting his forward momentum.

Often times, this would cause Julio to stop, back up and try to reset his offensive attack. Other times, he would keep rushing forward, yet Dzinziruk would merely back away and easily escape Julio’s primitive attacks without getting a scratch. From rounds six though twelve, Dzinziruk put on a boxing clinic making Julio look bad. The final judges’ scores were 116-112, 116-112 and 117-111.