By Erik Schmidt: Unbeaten light middleweight prospect Koko Murat (10-0-1, 4 KOs) defeated Belgian Bjorn Fiaert (7-1, 2 KOs) by an eight-round unanimous decision on Saturday night Erdgas Arena, in Riesa, Sachsen, Germany. Murat, 24, controlled the entire fight, using a powerful body attack to keep Fiaert bottled up and on the defensive. Murat is the younger brother of super middleweight contender Karo Murat. There were no knockdowns in the fight, but Murat made it exciting with his huge body shots in each round.
Murat appeared top hurt his right hand while throwing a body shot in the last minute of the 8th round and fought the rest of the way using only left.
Murat attacked Fiaert hard in the 1st round with big body shots. Murat loaded up often with right hand hooks and each shot made a lot of noise as they landed to the midsection of Fiaert. However, Fiaert, 26, took the shots well and would respond back often with right hands.
He had none of Murat’s big power but he at least tried, which seemed to please the German crowd who gave him applause from time to time. In the last 20 seconds of the round, Murat caught Fiaert against the ropes and landed storm of hard body shots until the round ended.
In the 2nd round, Murat continued landing incredibly hard body shots, hitting a badly out-gunned Fiaert over and over again with powerful body punches. During this time, Fiaert would bend forward and absorb the shots, practically begging to be hit with an uppercut. Unfortunately, Murat didn’t have an uppercut in his arsenal, as far as I could see.
During the entire round, Murat hit Fiaert with nothing but body shots, and in the closing seconds, Murat blasted him with 10 consecutive body punches while Fiaert was backed to the ropes. Fiaert took the shots well, but looked like a punching back and wasn’t firing back with anything.
Fiaert finally began to land some punches in self defense in the 3rd round, occasionally throwing a harmless right hand in between absorbing a mess of body shots. If I was to guess, I’d say that Fiaert was firing one right hand for every 15 body shots he was getting hit with. Yeah, it was ugly and one-sided. The German crowd loved it.
Murat seemed to get a little overeager in the 4th, madly attacking Fiaert against the ropes and forgetting all about defense as he buried one punch after another deep into the midsection of Fiaert. From time to time, Fiaert would land a big right hand that would snap Murat’s head around while he was throwing shots. Murat didn’t seem to care but it didn’t look good the way the way he was getting hit so cleanly by Fiaert.
If this had been a bigger puncher than Fiaert, Murat might have been picking himself up off the canvas on one of these wild body attacks. I suppose that’s the problem with being force fed one easy fighter after another. Eventually, bad habits like forgetting about defense become ingrained and have to be quickly changed once a fighter is put in with better opposition.
At the end of the round, Fiaert landed a nice combination to the head of Murat that had the German crowd cheering. However, Fiaert took an awful lot of punishment in the round and it’s a testament to his good training that he was able to take that many body shots without going down.
In the 5th round, Murat seemed to ease up on Fiaert, attacking him with less aggression than he had in the earlier rounds. It may have been that Murat tired himself out and was slightly gassed out, because he attacked him at a more moderate pace in this round. In the last minute, though, Murat trapped Fiaert in the corner and nailed him with flurry of hard body shots, all of which Fiaert took without trouble. As soon as Murat stopped punching, Fiaert fired back a single right hand, leading to another minor avalanche of body punches from Murat.
Murat lessened his punch output significantly in the 7th and 8th rounds, only sparingly attacking Fiaert to the body. He was still focusing exclusively on landing body shots but was only throwing two punches at a time instead of 10 to 15, which he had been doing in the prior rounds.
In the last minute of the round, Murat appeared to hurt his right hand after landing a long right hand to the midsection of Fiaert. With only his left working now, Murat continued pounding Fiaert to the body until the final bell in the 8th.