By Chris Williams: Former World Boxing Association (WBA) light middleweight champion Joachim Alcine (31-1, 19 KO’s) defeated 40-year-old Eric Mitchell (22-6-1, 11 KO’s) by a 10-round unanimous decision on Friday night at the Montreal Casino, in Quebec, Canada. The final judges’ scores were 97-93, 97-93 and 96-93. Alcine, 33, was making his first appearance in over a year since losing his WBA light middleweight title in a 6th round knockout at the hands of Daniel Santos last year in July 2008.
Alcine looked incredibly rusty against the 40-year-old Mitchell, looking nothing like a former champion. The bout had very little in the way of action between the two fighters as most of the rounds were consumed with the two clinching each other after every punch thrown.
In many cases, Mitchell and Alcine would clinch without any punches thrown whatsoever. In fairness to Alcine, many of the clinches were initiated by Mitchell, who looked like he wanted to slow the fight down to a crawl. If that was his goal, Mitchell did an excellent job at it.
He had a lot of help by Alcine, because he let himself be grabbed each time by Mitchell and didn’t seem to mind all the clinching. Mitchell was finally penalized one point in the 9th for the excessive holding,. It didn’t change anything, though, because as soon as Mitchell received his point deduction, he went right back to clinching continuously, as if nothing had happened.
Many of the rounds had few punches thrown or landed. In some cases, I could count only 10 punches thrown in a round. That’s how bad it was, and I can’t put the blame completely on Mitchell, like I said, because Alcine had a part in scheme of things as well.
Mitchell did a good job smothering Alcine in the first round as he immediately got on top of him, and landed some nice shots to the body. In between punches, Mitchell would wrestle and hold onto Alcine. It was made easier because Alcine was backing up to the ropes all the time instead of fighting in the center of the ring.
When Alcine did fight at the center of the ring during a few brief points in the round, he kept his left arm down by his side and was tagged repeatedly by roundhouse rights from Mitchell. Some fighters with especially quick reflexes are able to get away with keeping their guard down, but not Alcine. He was getting nailed and not learning from his mistakes by making chances to his porous defense.
The 2nd round had few real punches that landed during the entire round. Between constant clinching between the two fighters, Alcine landed a left and a right and one jab. That was it. Only three punches. Mitchell didn’t do much better only landing two punches of his own. This has to be one of the worst rounds that I’ve ever seen from two professional boxers. And it wasn’t as if Alcine didn’t have chances to throw some shots because Mitchell was there for the shots if Alcine would have just let his hands go.
Mitchell came back in the 3rd round, staying close to Alcine and landing a few body shots every now and then. It was another round with few punches thrown or landed. I counted eight all total punches, which was pretty pathetic.
I was surprised that the Montreal crowd didn’t boo these two fighters out of the arena because they both looked something awful. The 4th was a little bit better offensively, as there was 20 total punches thrown in the round, with Mitchell getting the better of the action with his body shots.
The 5th round was another round with little action. I counted only six punches thrown in the round, and again, Mitchell was the one that landed the more frequent shots, if you want to call it that. Alcine looked like someone that had crawled off a couch and wasn’t into throwing punches. Besides his lack of hand speed, he just looked lazy, slightly overweight and not interested in throwing punches.
Following the 5th, Mitchell’s output dropped off to almost zero in rounds six through ten. It’s hard to imagine a fighter dropping from four five punches thrown to one, but that’s pretty much what happened. I wish I could say that Alcine was doing much better but he wasn’t. For the remainder of the fight, Alcine averaged five to ten punches thrown per round. As I mentioned, Mitchell had a point taken away in the 9th round for holding.
I can’t really see much of a future for Alcine in the light middleweight division based on how he looked on Friday night. The power, hand speed and work rate just wasn’t there. I don’t know how Alcine ever became a champion in the first place, but I don’t think he’ll ever be one again judging how he looked against Mitchell and against Santos.