By Nate Anderson: Lightweight Andy Morris (16-2, 5 KOs) defeated the tough journeyman Youssef Al Hamidi (5-16-1, 1 KOs) by a four-round decision on Friday night at the Bellahouston Sports Centre, in Glascow, Scotland. Morris, 26, making a comeback after a year and half away from boxing, totally outclassed the wily Hamidi, winning every round with ease and showing a lot of skills. Morris used his jab and a lot of movement to keep Hamidi guessing throughout the four-round bout.
Morris was coming off a 7th round stoppage loss to John Simpson in his last fight in September 2007, which is why Morris opted to fight a 4-round bout rather than a longer fight. The referee scored the fight 40-36 for Morris.
In the 1st round, Morris tapped away at Hamidi using his jab, showing a lot of head and torso movement to avoid any possible shots from Hamidi. It looked good, although hardly necessary because Hamidi was throwing next to nothing back at Morris and looked to be just going through the motions in the fight rather than trying to actually win.
At the start of the 2nd round, Morris was told to go back to his corner by the referee to have excess grease removed from his face. Following this, Morris resumed stalking Hamidi and bombing him with right hands and jabs. I must say that Morris had very little power to speak of but he seemed to hit hard enough to get Hamidi’s respect.
For his part, Hamidi, again, threw very few punches in the round, but the ones that he did attempt to land missed badly. Normally, Hamidi is deadly accurate with his punches, but with the constant head and torso movement that Morris was doing, Hamidi found it increasingly difficult to land anything at all.
In the 3rd round, Morris held back with his punches, being very economical with them as if he was worried about getting hit. This allowed Hamidi to ramp up his own offense and land some nice jabs and right hands. Near the end of the round, Morris finally got his offense started when he landed two right uppercuts.
However, it wasn’t a good round for Morris, because not only was he not punching much in the round, he looked nervous.
Morris fought much more smoothly in the 4th round, showing a lot of different angles and throwing many more punches. His punch variety was deep, as he threw uppercuts, hooks, straight rights and jabs all from different angles.
It seemed as if he was trying to copy Hamidi’s unorthodox fighting style and dooming a damn good job at it. Often, Morris would step around quickly to the side of Hamidi and tag him to the head from an angle that Hamidi wasn’t prepared to defend against.
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