By Nate Anderson: EBU (European) super bantamweight champion Rendall Munroe (19-1, 8 KOs) defeated Ghanian Isaac Nettey (3-3-1, 1 KOs) by a 12-round unanimous decision on Saturday night to pick up the vacant Commonwealth super bantamweight title at the Crowtree Leisure Centre, in Sunderland, Tyne and Wear. The final judges’ scores were 120-109, 119-110 and 119-110. Munroe, 28, had trouble with Nettey in the first two rounds, however. Nettey landed often with right hands to the head and putting, putting a lot of pressure on Munroe.

After the 2nd round, though, Munroe began to move more and throw short double and triple rights and lefts. Nettey quickly wore down under Munore’s high workrate and threw less and less punches as the fight wore on.

Although Nettey had very little experience in terms of his pro record, you wouldn’t be able to tell by the way that he was performing in the first two rounds because he was landing some monstrous right hands and was landing cleanly with them through Monroe’s porous defense.

Nettey stayed close to Munroe, placing his head against the chest of Rendall, and blasting him with short uppercuts and hooks to the body. During this time, Munroe looked confused as if he hadn’t prepared for this kind of an attack from Nettey.

In the 2nd round, Munroe appeared to have made some adjustments in between rounds, as he was now throwing more short combinations to try and offset Nettey’s power shots. It worked somewhat, but not enough to shut down the big right hands that Nettey kept firing off every and now and then.

Munroe began to attack Nettey’s body in the 3rd round, putting a lot of energy into hooking Nettey with left hands. Before long Munroe’s efforts began to pay off as Nettey’s punch output began to drop and he seemed visibly bothered by the shots as he lowered his guard. Munroe then began to take advantage of this by landing power shots upstairs with great success.

Nettey came back in the 4th round and landed some big right hands to the head of Munroe. It was easy for Nettey because Munroe was standing square to him and not moving a great deal in the round. Also, Munroe threw a lot less punches in this round that he had in the 3rd.

In the 5th, Munroe came back with an impressive round, and landed some nice left hands to the head. However, Munroe let off on the body attack in this round which seemed like a mistake because it had been working in the past two rounds.

Nettey fought well in the 6th, tagging Munroe with big looping right hands to the head. These were big shots and Munroe was getting hit flush each time without even coming close to blocking any of them. Nettey looked tired in the 7th and spent a good portion of the round on the ropes covering up while Munroe landed the head and body with hooks.

Starting from the 8th round, Munroe looked like a completely different fighter as he moved much more, giving different angles and not standing directly in front of Nettey. It was pretty much one-sided from there as Nettey didn’t know how to deal with Munroe’s loose style of fighting and missed often as he tried to catch Munroe while he was moving.

In rounds nine through twelve, Munroe put a lot of focus on landing to the body of Nettey and seemed to wear him down fast with the big body shots. Nettey’s punch output dropped off to almost a trickle, as he spent a good portion of every round trying to cover up from Munroe’s shots. He was still trying to land on occasion but they were fewer and fewer as the fight neared the 12th round.