By Nate Anderson: Making his fourth defense of his World Boxing Association (WBA) bantamweight title, Anselmo Moreno (26-1-1, 8 KO’s) defeated his French challenger Mahyar Monshipour (31-4-2, 21 KO’s) by a 12-round split decision on Saturday night at the Par des expositions, Poitiers, in Vienne, France. The final judges’ scores were 115-113 for Monshipour, 116-113 and 116-112 for Moreno.
I had Moreno winning by a score of 10 rounds to 2. The scores, like in the bout between Colin Lynes and Souleymane M’baye, which also took place in France this weekend, were way off from what took place in the ring. In both cases, the French fighters took a beating and weren’t all that competitive.
Monshipour, 34, ranked number #12 in the WBA bantamweight division, applied a lot of pressure on Moreno all fight long, but in most cases it was ineffective pressure, as Monshipour would come rushing forward with his gloves glued in front of his face but when he would get in close, he would miss with most of his punches.
This happened pretty much in every round with Monshipour having a really pour time with his accuracy. Even when he had Moreno right in front of him, Monshipour would somehow miss most of his punches. In contrast, Moreno stayed on the move and constantly hit him with jabs and combinations to the head and body.
Moreno had great accuracy and rarely missed with his punches. Although he didn’t punch as hard as Monshipour, he landed so many punches that it didn’t really matter all that much. Monshipour looked bad in the first two rounds, getting hit quite a bit by Moreno, who was unloading on the French fighter with tons of punches as Monshipour would plod forward with his gloves up in front of his face.
Monshipour showed an excellent ability to work his way inside on Moreno. However, he couldn’t much when he would get there, because Moreno would land three or four punches to the face of Monshipour as he was coming in and would easily escape once Monshipour got near to him.
In the 2nd round, Monshipour only landed eight punches and missed the rest with scattergun approach to fighting. In the 3rd round, Monshipour made some adjustments and was able to connect with a lot of punches against Moreno, as he found his way inside quite fast and didn’t let Moreno escape like in the first two rounds.
If only Monshipour could have kept fighting like this, because in the 4th round, Moreno increased his punch rate and started moving even more, and was able to once again snow Monshipour under with a downfall of punches.
With Monshipour getting punches rained down on him by Moreno, the French fighter wasn’t able to get his shots off without taking three to four punches to the head while doing so. Moreno would then fight really effectively in rounds five through seven, looking to have done way more than what was needed to win these rounds by throwing a lot of punches.
By the 8th round, Monshipour’s face was starting to turn a bright red from all the punches he had been eating and he started bum rushing Moreno in a desperate manner to try and land his punches. It didn’t work, because Moreno opened up with a slew of punches each time to pick off Monshipour as he would come forward.
Monshipour had a good round in the 8th, doing just enough to win the round by a narrow margin. He was fighting all out, though, whereas Moreno looked to be coasting and fighting in a relaxed manner. There’s no way that Monshipour could keep up this pace for more than one round at a time without needing to rest in the next round or two. This enabled Moreno to finish the fight strong, sweeping rounds ten through twelve with his higher work rate.