Campillo Defeats Garay in Controversial Decision

By Boxing News - 06/23/2009 - Comments

garay433By Manuel Perez: World Boxing Association light heavyweight champion Hugo Hernan Garay (32-4, 17 KO’s) lost his title on Saturday night in a controversial 12 round majority decision loss to Spanish challenger Gabriel Campillo (18-2, 6 KO’s) at the Club Deportivo Libertad, Sunchales, in Santa Fe, Argentina. The final judges’ scores were 115-114, 114-113 for Campillo and 114-114.

There’s no way that Campillo, 30, should have won the fight, though, because Garay, 28, easily won the first five rounds of the bout before exhausting himself in the 6th and fighting badly until the 12th round, when Garay dug deep and pinned Campillo to the ropes for the entire round landing at will.

Doing the math, that comes out to six rounds for Garay and six rounds for Campillo. In other words, a draw. Two of the judges royally screwed up on this fight and obviously either were asleep in the 12th or messed up by giving Campillo one of the first five rounds.

In either case, it was a huge mistake because Campillo was battered in the first five rounds and also took a major pounding in the 12th. Campillo did a good job taking over the fight starting in the 6th round when Garay suddenly started looking really tired and stopped throwing combinations like had been doing earlier in the fight.

Campillo walked Garay down, firing off straight left hands, labs and hooks. The vast majority of the punches were blocked on the gloves of Garay. However, a lot of them leaked threw because Campillo was throwing so many shots. The 6th round was very close, and it could have gone for Garay.

I mean, Campillo only had a slight advantage in punches thrown in the round and Garay landed the much harder shots. Had Garay not dominated the first five rounds completely, I would have scored this one for Garay. However, I scored it as a mercy round for Campillo, giving it to him because I had to give him something.

The judges, though, should have scored this round too for Garay since he landed the much harder shots and was landing cleaner without his punches being blocked. From the 7th round, Campillo began to apply a great deal of pressure on Garay, throwing a ton of punches constantly and forcing Garay to go backwards.

In the first six rounds, Garay had been the one that was going forward and pressuring. However, Campillo was able to turn the tables for the next five rounds from the 7th to the 11th. Garay began to circle the ring starting in the 8th, trying to avoid being a stationary target for Campillo.

I didn’t work all that well, because the taller 6’2” Campillo easily was able to track the 6’0” Garay down and nail him with a never ending amount of shots. In the 11th round, Garay began to try smothering Campillo, getting in close and throwing a lot of short combinations on the inside.

This worked remarkably well, because Campillo wasn’t able to get leverage on his punches and his punch output dropped off in a big way. I still think Campillo won the 11th, but it was much closer than it had been since the 6th. In the 12th round, Garay pinned Campillo in the corner in the first minute, nailing him over and over again with combinations to the head and body.

Campillo was able to get off the ropes in the second part of the round, but Garay again pinned him to the ropes for an extended amount of times landing to the head with nice combinations. It was a sloppy round with both fighters looked exhausted and missing a lot of punches. Garay had the much better accuracy though.



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