By Jim Dower: Super middleweight Librado Andrade (28-2, 21 KOs) defeated Ukrainian Vitali Tsypko (22-3, 12 KOs) in an IBF super middleweight title elimination bout at the Bell Centre, in Montreal, Canada. The final judges’ scores were 117-109, 117-109 and 120-106.
Andrade easily won the one-sided bout, and knocked the overmatched Tsypko to the canvas in both the 2nd and 7th rounds with hard right hands to the head. Andrade pressured Tsypko hard throughout the 12-round bout, throwing a high number of punches in every round and causing Tyspko to expend a lot of energy trying to defend from Andrade’s constant pressure.
Andrade, 30, pressed the action in the 1st round, coming forward and throwing a lot of punches. However, many of the shots were blocked or came up short of his target. Tsypko, a southpaw, held his right arm way out in front of him, using it to jab and push at Andrade to try and keep him on the outside. It worked fairly well in this round because Andrade landed very few significant punches.
In the 2nd round, Tsypko landed a hard left hook to Andrade’s midsection in the opening seconds of the round. However, Andrade immediately fired back a hard right hand counter that dropped Tsypko on the canvas. It wasn’t a real huge shot, though.
Tsypko was squared up after throwing a left hand body shot and wasn’t prepared to be hit. Andrade could have hit Tsypko with anything at this point and Ukrainian probably would have gone down. He just wasn’t ready for any kind of shot in the position he was in.
Andrade, thinking he had Tsypko hurt, charged after him and landed a mess of right hands to the head in the next minute of the round. Tsypko took the shots well and fired back with some hard left hands. Finally, Andrade realized that he hadn’t hurt him and slowed down with his shots after a minute of prolonged punching.
Andrade stalked Tsypko around the ring in the 3rd, landing hard right hands. Tsypko did little until the last minute of the round when he started jabbing Andrade and hitting him with lefts. It wasn’t a close round, because Andrade had done a lot of damage with his right hands through much of it.
In the 4th round, the two fighters traded shots. Andrade worked his way in close to Tsypko and stayed there for long periods of time, hitting Tsypko with short punches to the head.
Andrade fought well in the 5th, hammering Tsypko with one right hand after another. Tsypko attempted to get some distance from Andrade by moving laterally and backing up. However, Andrade was like glue, sticking to him wherever he went and continuing his forward motion at all times.
He didn’t seem to care whether he was getting hit or not, seeming more intent on landing his punches. No matter how hard Tsypko hit Andrade to try and get him to back off, it was no use because Andrade had no fear of being hit in the head and would just keep coming regardless of the shots he was getting nailed with on the way in towards his target.
Tsypko had arguably his best round of the fight in the 6th, jabbing Andrade and nailing him with straight left hands. Andrade pressured him much less in this round and didn’t throw nearly as many shots. This allowed Tsypko to use his superior boxing skills to control the round with his jabs and left hands to the head.
In the 7th, Andrade looked as if he was out to make up for his previous round, immediately blasting Tsypko with a big right hand uppercut that hurt the Ukrainian. Tsypko attempted to get away by backpedaling along the ropes.
However, Andrade followed him and knocked him down with a short, powerful right hand to the head. After Tsypko got to his feet, Andrade bored his way on the inside and nailed Tsypko with a flurry of combinations. Showing great heart, Tsypko took the shots and fired back with lefts to beat back Andrade’s attack.
In rounds eight through eleven, Andrade pressured much less with his attacks and seemed content to fight in a more measured pace. Without a lot of pressure being put on him, Tsypko was able to land a lot of straight lefts and right hooks, making the rounds close.
Tsypko suffered a cut over his left eye in the 11th and a bloody nose. I had Andrade winning all of them because of his harder right hands, but it showed some of the same reasons why Andrade had problems with Mikkel Kessler and Lucian Bute.
When he pressured them, Andrade made them fight hard and gave them problems. Unfortunately, Andrade would lighten up on his pressure at times, taking rounds off in this regard, and getting dominated badly. Fortunately for Andrade, he wasn’t in the ring with Bute or Kessler and he could afford to pressure much less without feeling the effects by losing the rounds.
However, for Andrade to be successful against better fighters in the super middleweight division like Kessler, Bute, Carl Froch, Andre Dirrell, Andre Ward, Jean Pascal, and Jermain Taylor, Andrade is going to have to dig deep and start pressuring nonstop in every round of the fight.
In the 12th round, Andrade hurt Tsypko with a hard left-right combination in the middle of the round. Seeing that Tsypko was hurt, Andrade really poured it on for the remainder of the round, following Tsypko around the ring and nailing him with hard combinations.
Tsypko clinched Andrade to slow him down and prevent from getting nailed further. Incredibly, in the last minute of the round a hurt Tsypko came to live, firing back left hands as the action went toe-to-toe with both fighters landing big shots. Tsypko was totally exhausted and hurt, yet he kept firing shots until the final bell.
“He’s [Tsypko] very economical with his punches, so I had to be careful,” Andrade said minutes after the bout. “I was lucky to put him down in these (the 2nd and 7th rounds) two.”
The win puts Andrade back in against IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute, who defeated Andrade previously in a controversial 12-round decision in Canada.
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