By Eric Thomas: If World Boxing Organization light flyweight champion Ivan Calderon (32-0-1, 6 KO’s) was hoping to impress the big brass in the cable networks to want to take the risk of showing one of his fights, he failed miserably tonight by fighting to a 6th round technical draw against challenger Rodel Mayol (25-3-1, 19 KOs) on the undercard of the WBO welterweight title bout between champion Miguel Cotto and challenger Joshua Clottey at Madison Square Garden, in New York, New York.
Calderon clashed heads with Mayol numerous times in the fight, but in the 5th a huge cut opened up on the forehead of Calderon. A couple of head butts later, the fight was stopped at 1:50 of the 6th when the referee marched Calderon over to the ringside doctor who advised that eh bout be stopped. The final judges’ scores were 58-56 for Calderon, 58-56 for Mayol and 57-57 even.
I had Mayol, 27, winning four rounds to two. Calderon, 34, should feel himself fortunate that the bout was stopped early, because he was doing little in the fight other than landing an occasional shot and clinching after every punch. For the most part, Calderon seemed too small for the 5’4″ Mayol, and was giving away four inches in height.
Besides his height, Mayol also had the much longer reach and was able to stalk Calderon around the ring and bomb him from long range. Calderon did little in the first three rounds, rarely letting his hands go and getting hit a lot as Mayol stalked him around the ring hitting him with big shots.
How a judge could have scored any of these rounds for Calderon is beyond me, because you’d have to be ignored completely all the punches that Mayol was throwing – and landing – in these rounds to give them to Calderon. In rounds four and five, Calderon finally started pressing the attack and throwing punches after getting cut on the forehead from a clash of heads.
The head butt was almost doomed to happen because Calderon was diving in with every punch trying to grab the bigger Mayol to prevent him from firing back with his own shots. Again and again, the two fighters clashed heads from rounds two through five.
In the 5th, Calderon was roughing Mayol up, shoving him as they would get close. Early in the round as Calderon was rushing in to give Mayol another hard shove, he clashed heads with him opening up a big cut on Calderon’s forehead. It was his own fault because he really wasn’t boxing at this point and was employing a combination of shoving and grabbing Mayol.
After the head butt, the referee stopped the action and had a ringside doctor examine the cut. Immediately after the action resumed, once again Calderon came inside head first and banged heads once again with Mayol. Again, the action was stopped so that Calderon’s head could be examined.
This time there wasn’t a cut that occurred. I can’t explain what Calderon was trying to do in the ring, because it looked like he was going at Mayol head first like a Billy goat trying to ram him. I guess I could understand if somewhat – if that’s what Calderon was trying to do – because he was having big problems with Mayol’s size, power, reach and offensive skills.
Calderon was too small do much against him and didn’t have much of a prayer to beat him in an offensive fight out. As such, the head butts were a life safer of sorts for Calderon, because had the fight not been stopped when it was, I think he would have lost badly to Mayol. As it was, I think Mayol easily won by four rounds to two.
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