By Sean McDaniel: Having seen the Commonwealth welterweight title match between former champion Craig Watson (13-3, 4 KOs) and challenger John O’Donnell (21-1, 9 KOs) several times now, I can’t help thinking that Watson, 26, was royally screwed over in losing the fight by a 12-round split decision to O’Donnell. I’m not sure what fight the judges were watching, but it couldn’t have been this one because I had Watson easily winning by an 8 rounds to 4 margin.
The judges seemed to delay in giving the scores after the fight and after several minutes of anticipation the scores were finally revealed giving O’Donnell the victory by the scores of 113-116, 115-114 and 115-114. I’m not precisely sure how O’Donnell was able to get the win, especially given that he only fought in brief surges from the rounds eight until the twelfth.
I give O’Donnell full credit for doing the better work in rounds three through seven, because it’s hard to deny his impressive shots he was throwing in those rounds. Watson did little in those rounds that much is pretty obvious.
However, Watson did all the attacking in the first two rounds and landed a lot of fast shots to the head in those rounds. Watson seemed to stop punching in rounds three through seven, and looked fearful at times under the hard scoring shots from O’Donnell.
Watson clearly wasn’t throwing enough punches in those rounds and spent way too much moving around the ring, focusing on his defense. But, after the 7th round, Watson looked exactly the same as he did in the first two rounds and spent the last five rounds (8 through 12) landing fast punches and then getting out of range of O’Donnell’s big shots.
I’m not sure why O’Donnell stopped punching during these rounds because he was doing so well in rounds three through seven. However, he looked tired, slow and unable to catch up to the speedy Watson, who was making him look as clumsy and slow as Watson had made Matthew Hatton look in his one-sided 12-round decision loss to Hatton in May 2008.
Since the first two rounds are without question Watson’s rounds, and rounds three through seven belonging to Watson, the only rounds that I can see the judges’ messing up their scores on are rounds 8-12. Watson boxed beautifully in the 8th, landing fast combinations and ducking to get out of the way of O’Donnell’s shots.
The round was largely one-sided with Watson dominating it because O’Donnell was too slow to catch Watson, and when he did have the opportunities to throw shots, he stood like a statue in front of Watson and seemed unable to let his hands go.
O’Donnell landed one good shot in the entire round, a left hand at the very end of the round. But that certainly wasn’t enough to ignore Watson’s clearly superior work for the remaining 2 minutes and 55 seconds of the round.
Watson started off the 9th well, sticking a piston like jab in O’Donnell’s face and hitting him repeatedly in the opening minute of the round. O’Donnell tried cornering Watson in the opening minute but Watson easily ducked under his gloves and escaped.
In the 2nd minute of the round O’Donnell was able to land some shots with his left hand. However, Watson came on strong in the last minute of the round to dominate with right-left combinations.
In the 10th through 12th rounds, Watson continued moving and landing well with fast combinations to the head. O’Donnell continued to have problems throwing punches and landing when he would attempt to throw shots. All of these rounds were clear rounds for Watson, and in my right mind I couldn’t see how O’Donnell could be given any of them.
As such, the fight was scored poorly and Watson, the champion, was given the royal shaft in terms of scoring. Hopefully, he’s given an immediate rematch because this was an awful way for Watson to lose his title. In a way, it was like O’Donnell was the champion and Watson was the challenger the other night, and it should have been the other way around.
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