By Jim Dower: Unbeaten Russian middleweight prospect Matt Korobov (6-0, 5 KOs) defeated American Loren Myers (7-5, 2 KOs) by a harder than expected four round unanimous decision on the Saturday night on the undercard of the WBO welterweight title bout between Miguel Cotto and Joshua Clottey at the Madison Square Garden, in New York, New York.
Korobov, 26, won every round of the fight winning the fight by the judges’ scores of 40-36, 40-36 and 40-36, but in doing so Korobov was extended for the first time and took some big shots from the slow-handed Myers. In the last round, Myers put a lot of pressure on Korobov and hit him with some nice punches in the last part of the round.
Though Korobov still ending up dominating the fight and winning it by a landslide in the final scores, he looked tired and worried with the little bit of pressure that Myers, 28, was putting on Korobov in the fight.
Korobov dominated the opening round throwing pawing jabs, right hooks and straight lefts to the head of Myers. The southpaw Korobov fought well going backwards and scored a lot of right hooks as Myers rushed forward into the shots. Korobov was quite effective and landing right uppercuts from long range in the round and throwing them with good speed.
Myers could so little to catch up to the Russian in the round as he would quickly move out of range before Myers could get close enough to land one of his slow punches. Myers got hit with a hard right hand while rushing in during the first minute of the opening round and was knocked backwards a foot.
However, it didn’t discourage Myers one bit because he continued to press forward and wasn’t the least bit bothered by the right hooks and straight left hands that he was constantly getting caught with as he would come forward. Korobov landed a couple of hard clubbing right hands late in the round that I was sure would knock or at least hurt Myers. However, he took the shots without a hint of being hurt and continued to press forward with his attack.
In the 2nd round, Korobov came out firing left hands to the head and body, catching Myers as he waded in. It didn’t deter the American from coming forward, however, because he didn’t seem bothered at all by his shots. Korobov then started moving again and landing right hooks and uppercuts while on the move.
This had the effect of taking a lot of the power from Korobov’s normally power punches. Near the end of the round, Myers finally caught up with Korobov and nailed him with several hard shots to the head. The punches were almost as powerful as the shots that Korobov was raining down on him and they clearly bothered the Russian fighter who was started to look stressed and tired.
In the 3rd round, Myers increased the pressure that he was putting on Korobov, catching him along the ropes and nailing him with a three punch combination. From that point on Korobov opted to move much more and pretty much stopped using his left hand altogether as he focused almost entirely on using his lead hand – his right – to throw hooks and uppercuts.
However, Myers was able to nail Korobov with a handful of powerful shots in the last minute of the round. At this point, Myers looked like the stronger fighter as Korobov was tiring out. In the 4th round, Korobov landed a high number of perfect right uppercuts from long range.
The shots had a lot of power on them but none the less had no effect on Myers. In the 2nd minute of the round, Myers tagged Korobov with some huge right hands to the head as he crowded him up close. In the final minute of the round, Myers took over as he blasted away at a tired Korobov for the final sixty seconds of the round catching him numerous times with big right hands.
At the end of the right, Korobov’s face was red and he looked tired. It’s hard to say what would have happened if the fight had been a 10 or 12 round bout, because Korobov looked exhausted. If the bout had continued with Myers pressing him like in the 4th, I suspect that Korobov would have been knocked out.
All in all, I wasn’t impressed with his performance and feel that he was exposed in this fight. Myers showed that Korobov has problems with being pressured and that his stamina – or lack thereof – may be his weakness when he eventually steps it up to eight and 10 round bouts against better competition.
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