By Dave Lahr: Lightweight contender Antonio DeMarco (22-1-1, 16 KO’s) stopped Anges Adjaho (25-2, 14 KO’s) in the 9th round in the World Boxing Council lightweight Eliminator bout on Saturday night at the BankAtlantic Center, in Sunrise, Florida. DeMarco, 23, hurt Adjaho with a big right hand in the 9th round, staggering him and sending him down.
Before Adjaho could hit the canvas with his knee, DeMarco landed a parting left hand that barely tapped Adjaho on the back of the head. Almost immediately, Adjaho looked over to the referee to complain, and then in the next instant, Adjaho flopped down on the canvas face first, lying there and appearing to be waiting for the referee to penalize DeMarco for the punch while he was down.
The penalization never came, though, and instead the referee stopped the fight and gave DeMarco the win much to the disappointment of Adjaho, who was angry at the stoppage. It’s unfortunate that Adjaho failed to get up from the knockdown, because he might have been able to make a fight of it had he done it.
As it was, DeMarco was pulling away with the fight from the 8th round on, and landing the bigger shots by far. The bout was more or less a tactical battle in rounds one through seven, with both fighters taking turns jabbing and throwing shots one at a time. DeMarco, ranked #1 in the WBF, #2 WBO, #4 WBA and #9 in the IBF, seemed to be doing just enough to win most of the rounds with his left hand.
At the end of the 1st round, DeMarco landed a big left hand that sealed the round. Up until that punch, DeMarco had done little in the round and it looked as if Adjaho was on his way to winning it with a handful of jabs.
For some reason, DeMarco was paying him a lot of respect and treating him as a knockout threat, but the respect seemed unwarranted because Adjaho showed very little power in the fight and mostly missed with his punches all night long.
Like the 1st round, the 2nd and 3rd, had very little action to speak of with DeMarco appearing to do just enough with his jabs to win both of the rounds. Adjaho was short-arming most of his punches and looked afraid to commit himself for fear of getting hit with of DeMarco’s big counter left hands. DeMarco started off the 4th round throwing a lot of jabs.
However, he quickly opened up with a salvo of left hands, catching Adjaho repeatedly with four consecutive left hands each of which landed cleanly. For much of the remainder of the round, DeMarco would continue to hit him with straight lefts. In the 5th round, Adjaho finally was able to land some halfway decent right hands and do enough to win the round.
DeMarco did little in the round and appeared to take the round off. Adjaho started well in the 6th round, but then got hammered by a flurry of shots from DeMarco in the 2nd half of the round. DeMarco edged the 7th round by landing several hard left hands in a close round. In the 8th, DeMarco looked great tagging Adjaho at will with big left hands throughout the round.
DeMarco continued to fight well in the 9th, hitting Adjaho with left hands and dominating. Suddenly, DeMarco loaded up with a sneaky left hand that dropped Adjaho to the canvas where he then flopped down face first and the fight was stopped.