By Dave Lahr: Through no great surprise, World Boxing Council light heavyweight champion Jean Pascal (24-1, 16 KO’s) stopped his 43-year-old challenger Italian Silvio Branco (59-10-2, 36 KO’s) on Friday night at the Bell Centre, in Montreal, Canada. The win was almost a foregone conclusion, since Branco had done next to nothing – except age and dine on C level fighters – since being defeated two years ago by Stipe Drews in 2007.
Somehow, the WBC in all their wisdom, decided to rank the 43-year-old Branco as the number #1 challenger to Pascal despite Branco having fought exclusively 2nd and 3rd tier opposition in past two years. As such, the fight, as you would expect, was hopelessly one-sided with the scary fast 26-year-old Pascal beating the older Branco like a bad habit, putting him on the canvas three times – once in the 7th and twice more in the 10th round – until Branco’s corner wisely threw in the white surrender towel in the 10th.
Referee Gerry Bolen officially stopped the bout at 2:19 of the 10th. Branco, a two-time light heavyweight champion, might have been an okay fighter in his youth, but he clearly didn’t belong in the same ring with Pascal on Friday night. I don’t understand how the WBC could have seen anything in Branco’s recent fights to hoist him to the top of the WBC rankings above younger, and who I consider vastly superior fighters like Glen Johnson, Adrian Diaconu, Jurgen Brahmer, Roy Jones Jr., Yusef Mack, Chris Henry, Beibut Shumenov, Nathan Cleverly, Shaun George and Vyacheslav Uzelkov.
In my mind, it was really a bad ranking for Branco, who should have at least beaten another top contender to get the lofty number #1 ranking that he was given. Instead, he was put at the top spot by the WBC, and quite naturally, was totally dominated by Pascal in a dull, one-sided fight.
Pascal dominated every round with fast combinations to the head and powerful left and right hands to the body. Branco just looked too slow, too old and too limited to deal with Pascal’s fast hands. Much of the time, Branco would rush wildly at Pascal and attempt to fire off a couple of punches.
However, due to Branco’s primitive and badly telegraphed attacks combined with his nonexistent hand speed, Pascal would often move out of the way by the time the 43-year-old Branco got near him. The Canadian crowd loved every second of this terrible mismatch, screaming each time Pascal would land fast one-time combinations.
After a period of time, the bout resembled a bull fight with Branco assuming the role of the old tired bull. It was painful to watch and in a lot of ways annoying because of the high ranking that the WBC gave to Branco. I can’t get over that. I can’t believe Branco was given the number #1 ranking despite no wins over top ranked fighters in the past two years. Unbelievable.
With this victory, Pascal will now be looking at giving a rematch to Romanian Diaconu. The two fought in June with Pascal dominating the slower Diaconu and easily beating him by a 12 round decision. Frankly, I’d rather not see another one-sided fight between Diaconu and Pascal. Diaconu is a good fighter, but he was made to order for Pascal and looked like he was fighting in slow motion the entire fight. I’d rather see someone that might be able to fight competitively with Pascal, someone like Glen Johnson or Shumenov. Diaconu is a good fighter, but he looked out of his league against Pascal last time out. I can’t see anything changing unless Diaconu suddenly developed hand speed.