By Sean McDaniel: Taking on his best opponent in three years, former two-time World Boxing Association (WBA) super middleweight champion Anthony Mundine (36-3, 23 KOs) defeated Daniel Geale (21-1, 13 KOs) to capture the International Boxing Organization middleweight title on Wednesday night at the Entertainment Centre, Brisbane, in Queensland, Australia. The final judges’ scores were 114-113, 116-113 for Mundine and 113-115 for Geale.
Mundine, 34, who’s built up a reputation for fighting mostly soft opponents in the past three years since defeating Danny Green in 2006, looked faster than he’s been in ages in moving down to middleweight where Mundine hopes to capture another title.
However, it was far from easy for Mundine as Geale, 28, matched him nearly punch for punch for the full 12 rounds of the bout. In the end, though, it was Mundine’s harder shots that enabled him to edge Geale by a slight margin.
Except for a knockdown of Geale at the start of the 2nd round from a big left hand from Mundine, he struggled with the busier Geale for the first seven rounds of the bout, losing many of the rounds to the younger fighter along the way.
However, Mundine finished strong, appearing to win 10th, 11th and 12th rounds with his harder and more accurate shots. By late in the fight, Geale, ranked #6 in the IBF, #7 in the WBO and #11 in the WBC, was still throwing a lot of punches but he was missing many of them and his power had abandoned him completely.
The 1st round was fought at a fast pace with both fighters throwing fast shots back and forth. Geale, however, was the much busier fighter compared to Mundine who looked to be loading up more with his punches. Geale high volume offense was giving Mundine problems in the round.
At the start of the 2nd round, Mundine came out fast, landing a big left hook that caught Geale flush, knocking him to the canvas. Geale wasn’t hurt through and spent the rest of the round trying to make up for the knockdown by pressuring Mundine and hitting him with a constant flow of punches to the head and body.
It appeared that Geale did enough to make it an even round because it was a lopsided round following the knockdown. Mundine looked old in the round compared to the youthful Geale, who pounded Mundine without stop.
Geale continued to outwork Mundine in the 3rd round, staying close and hitting him over and over again with short combinations to the head. Mundine looked more concerned with landing big shots than trying to match Geale’s high punch output.
In the 4th and 5th rounds, Geale kept up his high pace and landed a lot of punches. However, in both rounds Mundine landed the much harder shots and landed enough punches where he seemed to edge the rounds by a slight margin. It was close, though, and it could have gone either way.
In the 6th round, Geale got the better of the action hammering Mundine with big hooks to the head. Twice in the round both fighters clashed heads. However, thankfully there were no cuts that resulted from the head butts. In rounds seven through nine, Mundine had constant tape problems with his hands.
The frequent timeouts seem to assist Mundine catch needed breaks, because they came at a time when it looked as if Geale was wearing down the older fighter. For three consecutive rounds there were one to two tape time outs per round, enabling Mundine to rest up.
Geale appeared to win the 7th, but in the 8th the timeouts for tape repair on Mundine’s gloves gave him more energy to fight. If not for that, Geale would have likely won this round too. In the 9th, Geale badly outworked Mundine and landed an avalanche of shots against the former champion.
However, in rounds 10 through 12, Geale faded badly allowing Mundine to take control over the bout and edge the last three rounds. Mundine was cut over his left eye in the 10th. Again, Mundine needed another timeout for tape repair on his gloves.
I’m not sure which type of take that was used on Mundine’s gloves, but I’ve never seen as many timeouts for tape repair before in a fight and it seemed to give Mundine an extra edge due to the timing of the timeouts.
After the fight, Mundine spoke about wanting to fight WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik next. Also a possibility is WBA middleweight champion Felix Sturm. I doubt that Mundine would beat either in looking at the way he fought against Geale. He would get a good payday out of the fights, but he doesn’t match up well with either Sturm or Pavlik.
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