N’Jikam Stops Martirosyan; Herelius Defeats Monrose – Boxing Results

By Boxing News - 06/29/2009 - Comments

hassan5334By Erik Schmidt: In a battle between top middleweight contenders, French based contender Hassan N’Dam N’Jikam (20-0, 14 KO’s) defeated Russian Gennady Martirosyan (17-2, 6 KO’s) in the 10th round on Saturday night at the La Palestre, Le Cannet, in Alpes-Maritimes, France.

N’Jikam, 25, had a commanding lead in the 10th when he caught Martirosyan, 29, with a short left hook that knocked the Russian to the canvas. Martirosyan sprang to his feet quickly, but then staggered slightly, causing referee Jean-Francois Toupin to stop the bout at this point.

Martirosyan, ranked #11 in the WBA and #12 in the World Boxing Organization middleweight division, had problems catching up to the constantly moving N’Jikam in the fight and missed with most of his attempts at landing. As the fight progressed into the later rounds, Martirosyan seemed to get discouraged as he realized that he was being dominated by N’Jikam and couldn’t doing anything to close the distance.

N’Jikam, ranked number #6 in the WBA and #11 in the WBO, circled the ring nonstop in the fight, rarely slowing down as he did huge loops over and over again. Most fighters would have only enough energy to fight in this manner for three or four rounds at best.

However, N’Jikam was in good enough condition to keep on the move for the entire 10 rounds, picking the slow-moving Martirosyan off easily with jabs and short right hands while on the move. N’Jikam’s fighting style looked like a cross between a young Roy Jones Jr. and Floyd Mayweather Jr.

Where the style differed was that Mayweather and Jones never stay on the move continuously unless they were fighting a knockout artist, and even then they liked to stand and counter the shots that their opponents were throwing at them. In the case of N’Jikam, his whole focus was to prevent from being a stationary target for Martirosyan, even though the Russian fighter is far from being a big puncher.

Martirosyan landed several big right hands in the 1st round, enough to win the round because N’Jikam only chose to throw a few punches of his own and spent most of the round circling the ring. In the 2nd round, N’Jikam started mixing in jabs and right hands while fighting on the move.

Martirosyan then suddenly found out how hard it was to land punches against him, because N’Jikam wasn’t stopping for more than a fraction of a second while throwing his shots. As soon as he would land a right hand, he was instantly in reverse on getting away laterally.

For Mayweather fans, N’Jikam was a breath of fresh air, because he seems to have Mayweather’s old safety first style of fighting down to an art. However, for boxing fans that like to see action and a lot of slugging, N’Jikam’s constant movement was painful to watch, because he wasn’t the least bit interested in slugging it out with Martirosyan despite having the power, speed and skills that probably would have led him to have success at beating Martirosyan with this kind of game plan.

At the start of the 4th round, N’Jikam dropped Martirosyan with a right-left combination. N’Jikam landed a quick flurry after the knockdown, but was unable to finish Martirosyan off. In rounds five and six, N’Jikam stayed on the move land pot shots with his right hand and nice jabs.

The movement took a lot of the power off N’Jikam’s punches, however. But he seemed unconcerned with that, and just wanted to win without getting hit a lot. In the 7th round, Martirosyan began to look really frustrated at his inability to land any punches.

His efforts at cutting off the ring up to this point had been largely unsuccessful and he didn’t seem to have a plan B for which he could fall back on to try another strategy. In the 8th round, N’Jikam changed his fighting stance from orthodox to southpaw over and over again, as if he thought it was needed to confuse Martirosyan.

It wasn’t need, though, because the Russian was already thoroughly confused by N’Jikam’s movement and had almost no chance of landing, let alone winning the fight. In both the 8th and 9th rounds, N’Jikam bounced with a lot of energy as he moved from one side of the ring to the other and looked surprisingly fresh for a fighter that had been on the constant move for so long.

At the start of the 10th, Martirosyan, now way behind on points in the fight, desperately went after N’Jikam trying to score a knockout. This, unfortunately, left Martirosyan open for a short left hook from N’Jikam, who nailed him with that punch and sent him down. The fight was stopped as soon as Martirosyan climbed to his feet.

Herelius Too Much for Monrose

Cruiserweight contender Steve Herelius (18-1-1, 11 KO’s) defeated Jean Marc Monrose (24-4, 15 KO’s) by a sixth round technical decision to capture the vacant World Boxing Association Inter-Continental cruiserweight title on the undercard of the N’Jikam vs. Martirosyan bout. Monrose, 27, was cut badly over the left eye in the opening round. The cut eventually was the cause of the stoppage in the 6th.

By this time, the cut had worsened and was bleeding all over both fighters and the much of the ring. In addition to the cut over Monrose’s left eye, he also had a bloody nose to go along with it. It’s hard not to see why, because Monrose attacked straight into the teeth of Herelius’ offence from the first round until the stoppage in the 6th, trying to get in close and overwhelm him with punches.

However, this was a bad strategy to take against Herelius, a fighter known for his high volume offensive output. Herelius simply turned up his punch output a notch and tagged at Monrose at will with big shots. Much of the damage occurred in the opening round when Monrose rushed Herelius and stayed directly in front of him at close range throwing wild shots.

This enabled Herelius to have a stationary target to throw his storm of shots against. Herelius isn’t much of a puncher despite having a body builder type physique, but he showed that he can cause a lot of damage of he has a sitting duck like Monrose standing right in front of him without moving out of range.

Monrose looked like a bloody mess by the 2nd round, with blood all over his face, his shoulder, and Herelius from his cut eye. Monrose planted himself directly in front of Herelius and didn’t budge for the entire round enabling Herelius to blast away at him with punch after punch.

Monrose only was able to land a small percentage of his shots at close range because he kept getting nailed almost every second by Herelius. Monrose fought slightly better in the 3rd round, but not enough to win the round. He was still getting hit an ungodly amount of times by Herelius and wasn’t using any kind of defense that I could see to try and block or otherwise get out of the way of Herelius’ incoming fire.

Strangely enough, it was Herelius who began to move around the ring starting in the 4th, playing keep away and nailing Monrose as he blindly followed him around the ring with both eyes filled with blood from his terrible cut. Had this fight been in England or the United States, this fight would have likely been stopped well before the 4th, because the cut was bad and the blood was everywhere.

The ringside doctor and referee did Monrose no favors by letting the fight continue, because he had no chance of stopping Herelius and was just getting beaten up. In the 5th round, Monrose’s nose began to bleed almost as bad as his left eye, and his right eye was starting to swell and turn a purple color from all the shots it had been getting hit with.

Herelius continued to move around the ring, hitting Monrose with jabs and nailing him with combinations. Monrose wasn’t landing at this point in the fight, because he probably couldn’t see a thing through all the blood that was all over his face.

After Monrose took a little more punishment in the 6th round, the fight was finally stopped when the referee took Monrose over to the ringside doctor and he advised that the bout should be stopped.