By Erik Schmidt: Unbeaten heavyweight contender Denis Boytsov (24-0, 19 KOs) destroyed journeyman Israel Carlos Garcia (19-3, 11 KOs) on Saturday night, stopping him in the 2nd round of a scheduled 12-round bout to win the vacant WBA Inter-Continental heavyweight title at the Stadthalle, Rostock, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. Boytsov, 22, dropped the 38-year-old Garcia with a left-right combination early in the 2nd at 2:03 of the round.
After a hurt Garcia got up off the canvas, Boytsov unloaded on Garcia with a flurry of shots while he futilely attempted to cover up on the ropes. Referee Jean-Louis Legland finally saw enough, stepping in between the two fighters and putting a stop to the bout at 1:17 of the 2nd.
Boytsov, a former amateur star from Russia and now living in Hamburg, Germany, toyed with the heavy, 256 pound Garcia in the 1st round, landing combinations to the head and body. Garcia threw a few jabs and right hands back at Boytsov, but was met with hard right uppercuts from the Russian fighter. Only 6’1″, Boytsov looked like a leaner, faster, more in shape version of WBA heavyweight champion Ruslan Chagaev but with better combinations and a lot more varied punch arsenal than Chagaev.
Boytsov attacked Garcia throughout the round, tagging him with hard one-two shots to the head and body. Both fighters clashed heads hard late in the round, but no cuts were opened. As the round ended, Boytsov landed hard left hooks to the head, and rights to the body. Garcia looked way out of his league in this one and didn’t appear good enough to take more than a round or two more of this kind of punishment.
Boytsov attacked Garcia hard at the start of the 2nd, dashing across the ring and hitting him hard with two rights to the body interrupted by a clinch from Garcia. Garcia then landed a nice right hand. However, as Garcia was pulling away, Boytsov tagged him with a hard right counter shot followed by a big chopping right hand to the head and then a left-right combination that put Garcia down on the seat of his pants at 2:03 of the round.
Garcia got up and followed the referee’s commands to walk towards him. After checking him out, the fight was allowed to continue. Boytsov then went after Garcia, following him across the ring and tagging him with a right hand and two left hooks to the head. Garcia kept retreating, hacking all the way to the ropes for a last stand of some sorts. Boytsov then landed two hard right hands, a left and then another big right to the head of Garcia as he covered up on the ropes. Referee Jean-Louis Legland then stepped in and stopped the fight at 1:17 of the 2nd.
It was a good win for the unbeaten Boytsov, currently ranked #8 in the World Boxing Organization and #11 in the WBA, but it’s way past the time that Boytsov start fighting better fighters. He’s being brought along far too slowly by his management team and appears to be wasting his time and risking being stunted by being force fed one D class fighter after another in Germany.
He’s clearly good enough to fight better fighters than what he’s been fighting, and by putting him in with such low level competition, it’s almost a certainty that Boytsov will struggle badly when he’s finally put in with a top tier fighter. By virtue of his high ranking, that’s likely to happen sometime soon in the future and my guess is he will have problems when that happens due to the lower level fighters he’s been put in with.
Comments are closed.