By Nate Anderson: British light middleweight Ryan Rhodes (42-4, 28 KOs) had an easy time beating a badly outclassed Hungarian journeyman Janos Petrovics (16-24, 8 KOs) by a 7th round stoppage on Saturday night at the Ulster Hall, in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Rhodes, 32, knocked Petrovic down with a left to the body in the 7th round. Petrovic got to his feet quickly, but the referee put a stop to the fight right then there, stopping it at 1:07 of the 7th.
It’s a good thing he did, because the fight had been a hopelessly one-sided fight from the opening round, with the southpaw Rhodes dominating every minute of the action. If not for his nonexistent power, Rhodes would have easily been able to finish off Petrovic much earlier than the 7th round.
Rhodes looked good, but it’s sad to see Rhodes wasting his time fighting so many low quality opponents like Petrovics. Rhodes needs to step up and fight someone better, maybe Anthony Small, because he’s wasting what little time he has in his boxing career by beating up on journeyman and other such poor opponents.
Petrovics was only able to throw a few punches in the opening round of the fight, which kind of set the standard of how he would fight the remainder of the bout. Rhodes hit him as often as he pleased, usually one punch at a time and very soft.
Against a fighter like Petrovics that wasn’t offering up against resistance whatsoever, I expected Rhodes to be able to throw some combinations and put some power in them. However, Rhodes pretty much threw only one punch at a time and mostly toyed with Petrovics.
I could understand the showboating if it were a class fighter or someone with a reasonable amount of talent, but against a journeyman with a 16-24 record. It seemed beneath Rhodes to showboat against a fighter this bad. Petrovics had no chance at all going into the fight and that had to be obvious to most people in the hall, but to play with him as if here someone to embarrass, it was off putting for me.
Maybe that’s the only way that Rhodes knows how to fight, but it looked bad and wasn’t needed in my opinion.
Rhodes dropped Petrovics late in the 2nd round with a hard right to the midsection. It seemed that Petrovics could take whatever Rhodes decided to dish out to him if it was to the head, but he had a definite weakness when it came to take hard body shots.
The one-way traffic continued into the 3rd round as Rhodes continued to hit Petrovics at will. By now, Rhodes was throwing more combinations, but short arming many of his shots as if he were afraid of being countered by Petrovics. He had nothing to fear, because Petrovics had his hands glued to his face much of the time and looked to be more of a sparring partner rather than an opponent.
Rhodes needlessly switched from southpaw to orthodox over and over, as if it were needed to get control over his over-matched opponent. It was totally useless and a waste of time, because Petrovics had no plan against Rhodes no matter which fighting stance he used.
Rhodes off and on toyed with Petrovics in the 4th, dropping both hands down by his sides and daring the Hungarian to try and punch him. If Rhodes really wanted to entertain the audience, he might have let Petrovics land some punches.
At least that way, the audience would find the fight semi interesting to watch. Ideally, Rhodes should have fought a good opponent and then he could have done all his showboating while likely getting knocked out, but he didn’t, and that’s too bad for the boxing fans.
In rounds five and six, Rhodes did whatever he wanted to Petrovics, hitting him with punches (mostly one shot a time) and following him around the ring. By this time in the fight, Petrovics was no longer throwing his obligatory three punches per round and instead was now throwing zero.
I don’t why his corner let him continue to fight because it was clear that he was just getting beaten up and not throwing anything back.
Finally, Rhodes ended the terrible mismatch by hitting Petrovics with a left to the body that sent him down to the canvas. The bout was then stopped by the referee even though Petrovics quickly sprang to his feet and wanted to continue fighting.
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