By Dan Ambrose: In a rare decision loss for a Canadian fighter, Herman Ngoudjo (17-3, 9 KOs) was defeated by Colombian Juan Urango (21-1-1, 16 KOs) by a 12-round unanimous decision on Friday night for the vacant International Boxing Federation (IBF) light welterweight title at the Bell Centre, Montreal, Canada. The final judges’ scores were 118-108, 116-110 and 120-106.
Ngoudjo, 29, was knocked down twice in the fight, both in the 3rd round. Though there were no additional knockdowns in the fight, Ngoudjo wasn’t able to overcome Urango’s power advantage and ended up losing the fight by significant margin. The IBF title was opened up not long ago when the former champion Paulie Malignaggi vacated the title in order to fight Ricky Hatton.
Urango, 28, was all over Ngoudjo in the opening round, walking through Ngoudjo’s jabs and hitting him with big power shots. Ngoudjo didn’t make it easy for him, though, by moving constantly in circles around the ring while flicking his jab. Urango found it easy to catch up to him and tag him with heavy shots. But Ngoudjo stayed on the run and figured it was best to keep moving rather than to try and stand and trade shots with the more powerful Urango.
Ngoudjo used speedy combinations to control the 2nd round, hitting the slower Urango repeatedly as he came plodding forward. It wasn’t hard to hit Urango, as Ngoudjo soon discovered, because the Colombian was always in his forward gear and coming in at straight lines. The problem for Ngoudjo was that he didn’t have any real power to keep Urango off of him for long. Without power, Ngoudjo was forced to run or else risk getting hurt with one of Urango’s many power shots. Urango loaded up with pretty much every punch he threw, even throwing his jabs with maximum power.
In the 3rd round, Ngoudjo made the mistake of getting in close and trying to trade power shots with Urango. After Ngoudjo landed a right uppercut, Urango answered back with a big left uppercut that put Ngoudjo down. Ngoudjo got up, badly hurt and continued fighting and taking a lot of shots to the head. Near the end of the round, Urango once again put Ngoudjo down, knocking him to the canvas with a hard right hand as Ngoudjo stood with his back to the ropes.
Ngoudjo fought back well in rounds four through six, using his fast hands to throw a lot of combinations and jabs, landing often. Ngoudjo’s movement kept Urango from landing his big shots with any kind of regularity.
Urango came back in the 7th, connecting with a log of hard power shots to the head of Ngoudjo. For his part, Ngoudjo looked tired from all the movement that he had done in the three previous rounds and was unable to stay away from Urango enough to avoid getting hammered in the round.
In rounds eight through ten, Urango landed well with hard combinations as Ngoudjo was now standing in front of him and unable to move like he had done earlier. Ngoudjo fought well in the 8th, landing some fast shots, but it wasn’t enough to win the round.
In rounds eleven and twelve, Urango continued tagging Ngoudjo with big shots and getting the better of him when the two fighters traded shots.
In the end, Urango’s power was the telling factor in the fight. He still looked very beatable in comparison to the other top light welterweights in the division like Junior Witter, Ricardo Torres, and Timothy Bradley, to name a few.