By Jason Kim: Middleweight contender Daniel Jacobs (18-0, 15 KO’s) defeated former star of The Contender reality boxing series Ishe Smith (21-4, 9 KO’s) tonight by a very questionable 10-round unanimous decision at the Toyota, Center, in Houston, Texas. The final judges’ scores were 96-93, 100-89 and 96-93. I personally had Smith winning the bout by two rounds based on his much better accuracy with his punches and his better overall boxing skills.
Jacobs, 22, looked like an unskilled novice against Smith, missing over and over again with his punches and showing really bad balance. Although Jacobs landed slightly more punches than Smith in the fight, Smith’s accuracy was pinpoint and deadly.
He controlled the fight when he wanted to and easily avoided Jacobs’ wild swings. Jacobs tried to box from the outside at times, but his jab was pawing, thrown without any conviction whatsoever. The scores for this fight was way out of balance with the reality of what took place in the fight, especially the judge that scored it 100-89 for Jacobs.
I’m not sure which fight he was watching because he couldn’t have been watching the Jacobs-Smith tonight. This wasn’t a lopsided fight by any stretch of the imagination. Smith looked sensational, whereas Jacobs stunk up the joint with all his misses.
Whatever the case, Jacobs’ stock will probably go down after a fight like this. Jacobs should have been able to dominate a fighter like Smith, yet he ended up struggling with him and going life and death. That’s not good sign for Jacobs, because there’s much better middleweights in the division than Smith.
Jacobs dominated the 1st round using his jab and constant movement. Smith did nothing but stare at Jacobs and throw little back at him. The crowd hated the lack of action and began to boo after only the 1st minute of the round. Smith finally started letting his hands go around the midpoint of the round, landing a nice body shot and a couple of big shots to the head.
Surprisingly, Smith was the harder puncher of the two. Jacobs previously had a reputation of being a hard punching knockout artist but starting with his fight against Michael Walker in May, it became pretty clear that Jacobs isn’t much of a puncher, and was getting all his knockouts because of his dreadful opposition that he had been matched against. Late in the round, Jacobs turned southpaw and fought that way for a short period of time.
In the 2nd round, Smith landed some huge left hands taking adnvantage of Jacobs’ poor defense. Jacobs continued to mostly throw jabs. When he would throw punches, he had no power on them at all and they looked slow.
The bout continued to be mostly dull in the 3rd round, as Jacobs continued to mostly throw jabs. At the end of the round, Jacobs landed a late right hand after the bell. It wasn’t much of a punch, but it angered Smith who had to be restrained by the referee Laurence Cole. Jacobs just stood there looking at Smith, as if to say “What are you going to do, punch me? We’re already fighting.”
Smith had an excellent 5th round, nailing Jacobs repeatedly with powerful right hands to the head. In the final seconds of the round, Smith staggered Jacobs with a big right hand to the head that had Jacobs holding on as the round ended. Smith continued to fight really well in the 6th round, taking advantage of Jacobs’ bad habit of retreating to the ropes by hammering him with big right hands as Jacobs stood with his back against the ropes. In between rounds, Jacobs’ trainer pleaded with him to stop retreating to the ropes, yet Jacobs continued to do so for the remainder of the fight.
Jacobs appeared to narrowly win the 7th round by being a little bit busier than Smith. However, Jacobs was hit often in the round by a number of huge shots from Smith. If not for Jacobs out-landing Smith by a wide margin, I would have scored the round for Smith, because his punches were much harder than the weak variety that Jacobs was throwing.
In the 8th round, Smith pummeled Jacobs while Daniel stood with his abck against the ropes. In the center of the ring, Smith had much more limited options, because Jacobs was moving well. But Jacobs kept making it easy for Smith by backing up to the ropes and practically inviting him to throw power shots.
This was a good round for Smith. In the 9th round, Smith continued to dominate the action with his much bigger shots. As the round ended, it looked as if Smith had another round in the bag, but he made the mistake of landing a right hand just after the bell. Referee Lawrence Cole had enough of the extracurricular stuff from Smith at that point, because he had already warned Smith several times for throwing punches on the side of Jacobs’ hips. Cole then took away a point from Smith for the late punch. With the deduction, I had the round scored and even round. Jacobs got hit with a lot of solid shots in the round.
In the 10th and final round, Smith fought well for the first half of the round, tagging Jacobs with some monstrous right hands. In the second part of the round, outworking Smith with his softer shots. Like many of the other rounds, it was a close round and I had Smith winning it because he landed the much harder shots.
All in all, I had the fight scored closely. I think Jacobs fought really poorly and showed a lot of problems with his lack of power and poor defense. His management team needs to hold off on moving him forward at this point because he doesn’t seem to have the power to compete with the better fighters in the division. It’s troubling that Jacobs had to struggle to beat a fighter like Smith. This is the kind of opponent that Jacobs should have breezed through if he was the real deal. Jacobs needs to find some power somewhere because he’s not going to get the job done with those weak pity-pat punches that he’s throwing.
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