By Jim Dower: Middleweight John Duddy (26-0, 17 KOs) survived a 10th round scare to defeat Matt Vanda (39-9, 22 KOs) by a 10-round unanimous decision on Saturday night at the Madison Square Garden, in New York, New York. In winning the fight, Duddy showed that he’s clearly not ready for a fighter in the class of WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik, and unless Duddy is only concerned with getting a good paycheck at the expense of his health, he would be better off looking at working on his defense a little more.
Though Duddy dominated Vanda in every round except for the 10th, he seemed to lack something. At first glance, Duddy had little power to speak of and the power shots that he was landing didn’t seem to have much effect on Vanda.
This was a fighter that was tailor made for Duddy and should have been an easy knockout win if Duddy had any power. However, in fairness to Duddy, his focus was more on throwing a lot of jabs, winning the rounds as if he was fighting an Olympic boxing match rather than pro, and avoiding turning the fight into a war. Given his fights against Walid Smichet and Yory Boy Campas, perhaps it was a good thing that Duddy was choosing to box more rather than trying to slug it out with Vanda.
Through most of the fight, Vanda stayed on the outside eating jabs from Duddy. Unlike his fights with Julio Chavez Jr. in which Vanda fought aggressively from start to finish, against Duddy he fought strangely passive as if he was trying to pace himself to avoid running out of gas. This essentially gave all the early rounds to Duddy without any struggle.
Vanda began to land some hard right hands in the 7th, but still it wasn’t much of an effort from him and he looked like he was still trying to conserve strength. Duddy looked only happy to jab and not have to worry about turning the fight into a war like most of his fights. Things began to heat up a little in the 9th when Vanda landed several hard right hands in the round to get Duddy’s attention.
However, it was nothing compared to what awaited Duddy in the 10th. In that round, Duddy came out looking as if he was going to have an easy round and just continue throwing a bunch of jabs and then go home with an easy decision.
Vanda messed up Duddy’s plans by nailing him with a big right hand a minute into the 10th round, snapping Duddy’s head back violently and staggering him slightly. Vanda then tore into Duddy, battering him with big shots reminiscent of the way that Smichet was beating Duddy nearly senseless in the 2nd round of their fight in February 2008.
For the next two minutes, Duddy was stalked around the ring by Vanda, who was looking knockout all the way. Duddy was now moving for his life, circling the ring and trying to survive by clinching. Vanda nailed Duddy with some more big right hands until the last 30 seconds of the round when Duddy finally seemed to recover enough to throw some harmless shots.
In the last 10 seconds, Duddy smiled as if he was enjoying the round, but it was hard to see how he could have been because for the 2nd time in the last three fights, Duddy had been badly hurt by an unranked journeyman fighter.
In the end, Duddy won the fight by the scores of 99-91, 99-91 and 97-93. With this win, Duddy could be next in line for a fight against Pavlik. Unless Duddy improves dramatically in the near future, I see him being knocked out in three or four rounds by Pavlik.
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