By Chris Thomas: Making his first fight against a light welterweight in years, Zab Judah (37-6, 25 KOs) defeated Ernest Johnson (18-3-1, 7 KOs) by a lopsided 10-round unanimous decision on Saturday night at the Madison Square Garden, in New York City, New York. The final judges’ scores were 99-91, 98-92 and 98-92. Judah, 31, a former IBF/WBO light welterweight champion, was making his first bout at the weight since 2003.
Judah came into the fight over the 140 pound weight limit, coming in at 144. However, the new weight seemed to suit him much more so than the 147 pound welterweight class, where Judah has struggled in recent years, losing four out of his last seven fights.
Judah fought well in the early rounds, hitting Johnson with jabs, hooks and uppercuts to the head and easily controlling the fight. In the 3rd round, however, Judah received a bad cut over his right eye and on the side of his left eyebrow. The cuts were taken care of well by Judah’s cut man and didn’t factor into the fight, much to his relief.
Judah mostly jabbed away at the slower, more limited Johnson in rounds one through six, hitting him easily and loading up with left hand shots. Johnson had little to offer up for his own part, and just looked awkward and over-matched most of the time. Occasionally, Johnson would land a decent shot, but it was hardly enough to even out all the punches that he was getting hit with by Judah.
In rounds seven though ten, Judah played it safe and jabbed Johnson at a distance, controlling the fight with ease and boring the crowd. Unlike many of Judah’s other fights in the past, this fight wasn’t nearly as entertaining, probably because of the cuts. He looked to be trying to avoid getting hit in the face, and fought defensively much of the time against Johnson.
There was such a wide gulf between the two fighters in terms of boxing skills that Judah could easily afford to stay on the outside and pick off Johnson from a far. By the 10th round, the crowd looked totally bored with the fight. However, you can hardly blame Judah for that.
He would have been foolish if he had continued to mix it up with Johnson hard like he did in the first two rounds, because his cuts, especially the one over his right eye, were both bad and put him in danger of having the fight stopped.
In the end, Judah had way too many skills for Johnson to deal with. One would hope that Judah can continue forward and beat a couple of top light welterweight contenders like Lamont Peterson, Junior Witter or Gavin Rees and then take on one of the title holders.
An intriguing bout would be for Judah to take on Ricky Hatton, a former IBF light welterweight champion, who’s facing Paulie Malignaggi this month. Hatton, however, rarely fights opponents like Judah, and the closest thing he’s come to doing that is his fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr., who stopped Hatton in the 10th round. For that reason, I doubt Hatton would be interested in fighting Judah any time soon.
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