Vazquez Defeats Prescott in Shocking Upset

By Boxing News - 07/20/2009 - Comments

prescott233535By Eric Thomas: In a big upset, lightweight contender Breidis Prescott (21-1, 18 KO’s) was defeated by Mexican Miguel Vazquez (25-3, 12 KO’s) by a 10-round split decision on Friday night at Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino, in Las Vegas, Nevada. The judges’ scored it 97-92 for Prescott, and 95-94 and 96-93 for Vazquez.

None of the scores accurately showed who the real dominant fighter was in the bout, because the fight wasn’t even remotely as close as the final scores would have you believe. Prescott lost by a lopsided decision and at best, won one round and nothing more beyond.

It wasn’t as if Vazquez was a world beater by any stretch of the imagination, because I think he would be beaten senseless against a good lightweight like Juan Manuel Marquez, Juan Diaz, Joel Casamayor, Urbano Antillon, Mike Alvarado, Yuri Romanov, Anthony Peterson and a few others, but Prescott fought as if he had no clue how to beat Vazquez.

There was no mystery about what Vazquez was doing in the fight. He basically stuck to a jab and used it as his main weapon, throwing it over and over again and moving in and out when throwing power shots. Instead of compensating by throwing a lot of jabs himself, Prescott made the mistake of lunging at Vazquez and trying to nail him with wide hooks.

It wasn’t working out for Prescott early on and he needed to make adjustments by attacking Vazquez and forcing him to fight or else working him over with his jab. Instead, Prescott put all his hopes in throwing one big bomb at a time, and ending up missing with most of his wide shots.

Against a crafty defensive fighter like Vazquez, Prescott needed to be focusing on volume punching, taking power of his shots and staying busy by throwing a ton of punches. Instead, Prescott threw one big bomb at a time and was unable to connect with enough of them to make up for all the jabs and hooks he was getting hit with.

Prescott started off well in the fight, knocking Vazquez down with a jab in the opening round. Prescott looked great in the round, throwing and landing a lot of big shots. Vazquez was in full retreat during the round was unable to fight effectively when going backwards. Instead of keeping it at this pace, Prescott slowed down in the remaining nine rounds, throwing only one punch at a time for the most part and trying to take Vazquez out with a single shot.

You can hardly blame Prescott for doing so, because he had easily taken out Amir Khan a year ago, stopping him in the 1st round in September 2009. However, the difference here was that Khan had a glass jaw and couldn’t take Prescott’s shots, and Vazquez could.

After the 4th round, Prescott was slipping behind in the fight against Vazquez and was getting picked apart by jabs and left hands. Vazquez seemed to thrive at fighting at the slow pace that Prescott was pushing the fight at. Beyond throwing jabs, there really wasn’t much more that Vazquez was doing to win the fight.

He basically was controlling Prescott with his jabs alone with a periodic left or right hand thrown in every once in awhile. Prescott fought amateurishly, retreating in a straight line in the 6th round when attacked by Vazquez and nailed by a series of jabs and then a big left hand to the head.

It was embarrassing at how badly Prescott was fighting against Vazquez, because he looked so green and not ready for a skilled fighter like the Mexican. In rounds seven through ten, Vazquez jabbed Prescott silly, hitting him again and again, messing up Prescott’s rhythm as he would attempt to throw his big power shots.

With no plan ‘B’ to use besides winding up on big power shots, Prescott seemed helpless after it became apparent that he wasn’t going to be able to knock Vazquez out or hurt him with his big power shots. By the 8th round, Prescott’s right eye began to swell up from the tons of jabs he was eating. Vazquez continued throwing jabs in the final two rounds, beating Prescott to the punch and boxing circles around him in the 9th and 10th rounds.

The loss for Prescott was a real killer for his career. Prescott had moved up to number #4 in the World Boxing Organization and #5 in the WBA in the past year. But, now Prescott is going to have to find a way to work his way back into title contention. He had hopes of getting a title shot against one of the champions in 2010, but that looks all but impossible now.

The loss for Prescott also takes heat off of Khan, who will have an excuse for not fighting rematch with Prescott now that he’s been beaten. In hindsight, it seemed like a really bad idea for Prescott to be matched up with a defensive specialist like Vazquez.

If they were going to be putting Prescott in with a better fighter, he would have been better served to put him with a top lightweight slugger like Antillon rather than a crafty fighter like Vazquez. However, sooner or later Prescott would meet up with a fighter like Vazquez, so it might be a good thing that he’s fought him now early in his career so he can try to learn from this experience.



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