By Erik Schmidt: Undefeated WBA and WIBF female flyweight champion Susi Kentikian (24-0, 16 KOs) defeated her American challenger Elena Reid (19-5-6, 5 KOs) by a lopsided 10-round unanimous decision at the Sporthalle, Austerdorf, in Hamburg, Germany, on Friday night. The final judges’ scores – 100-90, 100-90 and 100-91 – showed how truly one-sided the fight was. Kentikian, 21, made it look easy as she battered her hopelessly outclassed opponent for 10 rounds, giving her a terrible beating in a fight that was never close from the very beginning.
If people thought that Reid, 27, would be a competitive opponent for Kentikian, they quickly found out that wasn’t to be the case as Kentikian savagely attacked Reid from the opening round with combinations.
Having seen Reid fight on a number of occasions, I was struck by how soft and flabby she had gotten around her midsection and her arms, both looked noticeably fatter than I’d seen of her in the past and it made me wonder about her training for this fight.
But worse than the excess flab on her body was her lack of hand speed and power. Of course, she never was a big puncher, but shed used to have much better hand speed than she showed on Friday night. She looked really slow against Kentikian, and I couldn’t imagine her excess weight slowing her down as much as it did. I chalked it up due to her natural aging process, which likely has caused some her fast twitch fibers to deteriorate a little more rapidly than normal.
In the 2nd round, Kentikian stalked Reid around the ring, landing hard right hands to the head. On two occasions in the round, Kentikian caught Reid against the ropes and unleashed a flurry of shots. By the end of the round, Reid’s right cheek began to show swelling from all the shots she had taken in the round.
Reid, for her part, was only able to land a few punches in the round, and then only because Kentikian was leaving herself open with her big flurries.
Reid, a southpaw, looked timid and afraid in the 3rd, getting caught three separate times by Kentikian with flurries. Reid was throwing a few token punches back, but she was getting nailed far more than the few meager shots she could land.
In the 4th, Kentikian held her left hand way out in front of her in an exaggerated stance, looking like as fighter from a century ago, as she attacked Reid with hooks. Reid was taking hard shots, and doing little to block or get out of the way of any of them.
The punches were knocking Reid’s head from one direction to the other, and the expression on her face was like someone who was completely miserable. She looked like she didn’t belong in the ring with a fighter in the class of Kentikian – or with anyone else for that matter.
She didn’t look like a boxer in this fight, but rather someone really over the hill and out of her class. I imagine if Reid had a way of making herself disappear, she might have taken that option because she was a like a small dear standing in front of a mini truck and was helpless to get out of the way of it.
The fight arguably could have been stopped at this point and there would have been no argument from me, because Kentikian was not just one level above Reid in ability, but several levels. All Reid was doing in the fight was serving as a punching bag, absorbing punishment and not throwing anything back.
I was impressed with the shots she was able to take, but what for? She wasn’t throwing back, had no hand speed, no power and just was taking shot after shot without firing back. By this point in the fight, it was already a horrendous mismatch.
I could see the fight being allowed to continue if Reid had a fighting chance to score a knockout at some point, because she surely wasn’t going to win on points with her getting out-punched roughly 30 to 1 in every round. But the problem here is that Reid had absolutely no power on her powder puff shots, and was doing no damage when she was landing an occasional lucky shot.
Kentikian started fast in the 5th, attacking Reid hard and hitting her with huge volley for fire. Reid attempted to escape by going to the ropes, but Kentikian followed her there and continued with the one-sided beating. Reid looked like a war survivor by the end of the round, and had only been able to land one measly punch in the round.
In rounds six and seven, Kentikian poured it on, giving Reid all she could take with many sustained flurries. For her part, Reid missed on her four out of five attempts to land in the 6th, and again was only able to land one punch in the round. Reid began to look more and more like someone who wished they were somewhere else. She looked frightened and detached from the fight, like she wasn’t there mentally.
Reid’s right cheek began to swell even worse by this point in the fight. In the 7th, Kentikian began to get in close, landing quick combinations to the head. Reid was doing a poor job of defending any of the punches that were being thrown her way, which was bad when taken into account that she wasn’t throwing anything that was landing.
Mostly, she was just blocking punches with her face and looking miserable. In the 8th round, Kentikian eased off on Reid, showing her some mercy by not drilling her nearly as often as she had in the seven prior rounds.
Even then, Reid was only able to land a few meaningless punches, not nearly enough to win the round.
After taking a scolding between rounds by her trainer, Kentikian came out for the 9th on fire, tagging a shell shocked Reid with one power punch after another and getting hit rarely in return.
Reid attempted to land several shots at the beginning of the 9th, but Kentikian skillfully ducked them all without getting hit. In the 10th, Kentikian gave Reid a terrible beating, and by the end of the round Reid looked disoriented and punch drunk as she walked back to her corner looking totally out of it.
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