By Sean McDaniel: Newly crowned WBA super bantamweight champion Bernard Dunne (28-1, 15 KOs) received an award earlier today from the World Boxing Association, who named him ‘the boxer of the month’ for Dunne’s 11th round stoppage victory over champion Ricardo Cordoba (34-2-2, 21 KOs) on March 21st at the O2 Arena, in Dublin, Ireland.

At the time of the stoppage, Dunne was well behind in the fight and appeared to be in the process of losing the fight. Cordoba was down once in the 3rd and another three times in the 11th.

Dunne, 29, also visited the canvas, getting knocked down twice in the 5th round. The fight probably should have been stopped in the 5th because Dunne was badly punished in the round and at one point was hit with 30 consecutive head shots without throwing anything back in return.

However, Dunne had advantage of fighting in his home arena and the referee wasn’t about to step in and halt the fight. The fight was appealing because of the knockdowns but Dunne clinched far too much in the fight and probably should have been either penalized multiple times for what I consider to be excessive clinching or disqualified.

I give a lot of credit to Cordoba for having to travel to Ireland to defend his title in front of a huge, hostile audience. That couldn’t have been an easy experience for Cordoba.
In other news, EBU (European) super bantamweight champion Rendall Munroe reportedly has no problems with traveling to Ireland to fight Dunne for his WBA super bantamweight title.

Munroe, 28, saw Dunne’s bout with Cordoba and wasn’t enamored with the how Dunne looked in the fight and immediately called Dunne out. Munroe doesn’t care about home advantage or the money, he just wants a shot at Dunne. Munroe is coming off an easy 12-round decision victory over Spaniard Kiko Martinez in February, dominating him over 12 rounds with relative ease.

Martinez is the same fighter that destroyed Dunne in a 1st round TKO in August 2007. As of now, I’d have to pick Munroe to handle Dunne with few problems regardless of where the fight is at. Munroe is more of a defensive fighter than Cordoba and he won’t make the same mistake of trying to just slug it out with Dunne in front of a huge crowd of over 9000 fans.

Wright’s Career on the Line Against Williams on Saturday night

Former IBF/WBA/WBC light middleweight champion Ronald “Winky” Wright finds himself in a do or die situation for his boxing career in a fight with Paul Williams in a middleweight clash this Saturday night at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Wright, 37, comes into this fight in less than the best circumstances having been out of action for almost two years since losing a 12 round decision to Bernard Hopkins in 2007.

Wright holds victories over Shane Mosley, whom he defeated twice, as well as a win over Felix Trinidad. However, a draw with Jermain Taylor and a loss to Hopkins seems to have taken a lot of the air out of Wright’s career.

Wright has a lot to gain should he win, because Williams is considered by many to be one of the most feared fighters in the welterweight division, a fighter that few of the top welterweights want to risk fighting because of his huge height of 6’2” and high work rate. Williams, 36-1, has looked nearly unbeatable in his career, only losing once against Carlos Quintana. Williams defeated Quintana in a rematch in June 2008.

A win over Wright will further increase William’s stature in the boxing world and hopefully bring him closer to someday becoming a big PPV star. As of now, Williams is still trying to make a name of himself despite being a two-time WBO welterweight champion and being the interim WBO light middleweight champion with a 9th round TKO victory over Verno Phillips in November 2008.