By Nate Anderson: In a card filled with controversial decisions, former World Boxing Association light welterweight champion Souleymane M’baye (38-3-1, 21 KO’s) defeated former BBBofC and EBU (European) light welterweight champion Colin Lynes (31-6, 12 KO’s) by a 12-round split decision for the vacant European Boxing Union light welterweight title on Friday night at the Palais des Sport Marcel Cerdan, Levallous-Perret, Hauts-deSeine, France.
The final judges’ scores were 115-111 for Lynes, 115-112 and 115-112 for the 34-year-old M’baye. I had Lynes winning by a comfortable margin of four rounds. Lynes dominated the fight through the 9th round before fading in the last three rounds and mostly clinching in rounds 10 through 12.
However, there was nothing close about rounds one through nine, as Lynes entirely controlled those rounds with M’baye rarely landing more than a few punches in each round. However, the decision isn’t all that surprising, because M’baye, after all, was fighting in his home country of France. However, this was an especially lopsided fight with Lynes dominating the action, so I expected that the judges would at least be able to get this one right.
They didn’t obviously and scored it for M’baye, even though he was badly outworked in the first nine rounds. In the last three rounds, Lynes clinched after every punch he threw. There were few punches that landed between both fighters because of the clinching.
However, I had to give those rounds to M’baye because of Lynes’ clinching. But in reality, those rounds looked pretty much even because M’baye didn’t land much of anything. Lynes, 31, used his jab and combinations to control the action in the first three rounds.
Lynes did all the punching for the most part, and landed almost at will against the wooden M’baye, who seemed frozen in place for long stretched of each round unable or unwilling to let his hands go. I’d seen M’baye do the same thing in other bouts against Herman Ngoudjo and Gavin Rees, losing both of those fights when fighting outside of his native France.
Had those fights occurred in France, I guess M’baye would have won them too, because he did about as much in those fights as he did in his fight with Lynes on Friday night. In other words, M’baye stunk up the joint and did little in the fight other than take shots to the head and hold up his arms. The scoring of two of the judges was nothing short of ridiculous.
I’m no fan of Lynes, but he clearly deserved the victory because the fight wasn’t close. In rounds four through six, Lynes continued to get the better of M’baye both on the inside and outside with combinations. It didn’t matter what Lynes did, he found success against M’baye.
It was as if Lynes was fighting a punching bag, because M’baye wasn’t throwing anything back and just taking shots. How two of the judges could have been giving him rounds in the first nine of the rounds is beyond me.
In each of those rounds, M’baye only landed two to five punches per round and threw very few shots. It looked as if he had dead nerve tissue in his arms, because his reflexes looked shot and he was unable to let his hands to until way after Lynes had moved out of range.
In the 8th round, M’baye was penalized one point for intentionally head butting Lynes while he was backed up against the ropes. This, too, was another round in which Lynes dominated the action, thus this should have been a 10-8 round.
At this point, M’baye needed a knockout to win the fight because he was deeply behind in the fight on my scorecards. However, two of the judges had M’baye incredibly in front. Lynes did all the punching in the 9th round, as M’baye only landed one punch during the entire round.
However, at this time Lynes began to start to clinch a lot. This would continue in the 10th through 12th rounds, making it hard to score them. Like I said, I gave the rounds to M’baye because of Lynes constant clinching, even through Lynes continued to outwork M’baye in each of the rounds.
—————–
In the other controversial bout on the card, EBU lightweight champion Anthony Mezaache (16-5-3, 3 KO’s) defeated Ukrainian challenger Andrei Kudriavtsev (31-7, 13 KO’s) by a 12-round unanimous decision. This, too, was another fight that wasn’t close as Kudriavtsev, 32, was the more active fighter and landed the much harder shots throughout the fight.
I had Kudriavtsev winning eight rounds to four. This isn’t the first fight that has been controversial for the Frenchman Mezaache, as he defeated Jonathan Thaxton by a deeply questionable 12 round decision in February in a fight that I had Thaxton winning by at least two rounds.
On Friday night, Mezaache, 30, gave away lot of rounds by running continuously around the ring in big circles without throwing any significant punches. He would flick out a jab here and there while on the move, but it wasn’t nearly as much as the shots that he was getting hit with by 32-year-old Kudriavtsev.
I had Mezaache starting off well winning the first three rounds with his more accurate punches. He was much busier at this time than Kudriavtsev, who seemed reluctant to let his hands go at this point in the fight. However, in rounds five through seven, Kudriavtsev took control over the fight with his better work rate and harder shots.
Again and again, Kudriavtsev cornered Mezaache and nailed him with flurries. In the 9th round, Mezaache came back to win the round by a close margin. He ran the entire round, but was able to land a few more shots on the run and keep Kudriavtsev from landing any punches.
In rounds 10 through 12, Kudriavtsev finished strong landing flurries of punches and dominating the action. Mezaache ran around the ring for the most part, playing keep away as if he had a huge lead that he was sitting on. As it turned out, he did and ended up winning the fight despite appearing to lose most of the rounds.