By Jason Kim: Cruiserweight contender Matt Godfrey (19-1,10 KO’s) defeated Shawn Hawk (18-1, 16 KO’s) on Friday night by a 10-round unanimous decision at the Arena, Philadelphia, in Pennsylvania. The win, although a dominating one by the 28-year-old Godfrey, was far from impressive, as he boxed throughout the 10 round bout, taking few chances to slug it out with the over-matched Hawk.

Godfrey fought cautiously, much too carefully for quality of his opponent, who had little chance. Godfrey did little more than jab, circle the ring and clinch through the 10 rounds, and looking dull for the most part. Since the fight was shown live on ESPN, it was thought that Godfrey might put out some effort to try and look good by unloading with some heavy artillery against the painfully over-matched Hawk.

However, Godfrey would continue to play it safe for the entire 10 rounds, making the fight boring to watch. Hawk came into the bout with an undefeated record at 18-0. However, the wins had come against mediocre opposition almost entirely, making the fight record pretty much meaningless.

In rounds two and three, Godfrey fought well using his jab, clinching a lot and throwing occasional one-two combinations. He did a good job of avoiding the infrequent shots from Hawk. However, the action was almost impossible to watch because of how boring the fight was.

With the kind of opponent that Godfrey had, he should have been teeing off and trying to get out him out of there, but instead was waltzing around with him, circling and clinching constantly and throwing mostly jabs.

Hawk was unable to land much of anything because of his terrible hand speed and his slow feet. He moved as if he was stuck in mud and was unable to cut off the ring on Godfrey and force him to fight. Many of Hawks few punches that he did attempt, missed by four or five inches coming up short because he wasn’t getting close enough when throwing his shots.

In rounds four through six, Godfrey continued to throw one punch at a time, sometimes landing right hands, lefts and jabs. The shots were all thrown with about the same amount of power and had little effect on Hawk. In the 6th, one of Hawk’s better rounds of the fight, he landed seven punches that I could see, which was a high for him by count.

It was terrible, obviously, but it showed how one-sided this fight was. In rounds seven though ten, Godfrey continued his pattern of circling the ring, clinching and throwing a ton of jabs. It was winning him rounds, but boring me to tears.

I realize that Godfrey is a finesse fighter, but I would have liked to have seen him take a little more chances against the limited opponent that he was in there against. Godfrey finished strong, winning the seventh through tenth rounds by a wide margin.

He had little problem with Hawk, who continued to do little in the last three rounds of the fight. By the end of the bout in the 10th, the crowd was booing loudly and I was ready for a good sound sleep.

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Light middleweight Derek Ennis (18-2-1, 12 KO’s) defeated 35-year-old John Mackey (11-4-2, 5 KO’s) by a six-round unanimous decision. Ennis, 28, knocked Mackey down twice in the fight, once in the 2nd round from a big left hand and then another time in the 6th from a right. Mackey was coming back at the time that he was dropped in the 6th, and the knockdown effectively sealed the victory for Ennis.

Mackey appeared to win rounds three through five with his better work rate and heavy pressure that he was putting on Ennis. However, in urgently going after Ennis in the 6th and final round, Mackey left himself open for a big right hand from Mackey and ended up getting hurt and dropped by Ennis. The final judges’ scores were 58-54, 59-53 and 58-53.