By Jim Dower: In his first fight since being defeated in a lopsided eight round decision in April 2009, middleweight contender John Duddy (27-1, 17 KO’s) returned to the ring on Saturday night to defeat Jorge “Michi” Munoz (21-3, 13 KO’s) by a 10 round unanimous decision on the undercard of the World Boxing Organization light featherweight match-up between champion Juan Manuel Lopez and challenger Rogers Mtagwa, and the WBA featherweight bout between champion Yuriokis Gambia vs. Whyber Garcia at New York’s Madison Square Garden. The final judges’ scores were 80-73, 79-73 and 79-73.

Duddy, 30, had it easy against Munoz, as his opponent rarely threw anything back at him and mostly served the purpose of a punching bag for Duddy to get an easy win and pad his record. It was good for a change to see Duddy not have to go to the ends of the earth to beat a B class fighter. However, he did suffer a bloody nose in the 1st round from one of Munoz’s jabs.

Duddy controlled most of the 10 round fight using his jab and rights to inflict punishment on his over-matched opponent. Duddy held back from going to war with Munoz and instead opted to fight safely at a distance with his jab. If this fight had taken place last year, Duddy would have likely gone all out to try and stop Munoz and probably would have taken a lot of punishment in the process of taking him out. It isn’t that Duddy cuts easily, it’s that his defense if really poor and he leaves himself open for a lot of return fire when he throws punches.

The win for Duddy keeps alive his hope of fighting unbeaten Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. sometime next year. If the fight does come off, it will match two fighters with inflated records, both of them ranked high in their respective divisions despite having fought largely 2nd tier competition. Duddy was boxed silly by Billy Lyell, a decent fighter but nothing all special, last time out. And last year, Duddy was ripped apart by club fighter Walid Smichet in a 10 round majority decision win for Duddy.

A lot of boxing fans felt that Duddy should have lost that fight. He might as well have lost it because it took away his opportunity to fight for a title against WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik in June of that year. Duddy remains popular with East coast boxing fans, even though he has faced mostly lower level fighters during his pro career and struggled against a number of them.

His lack of power, hand speed and defense would suggest that Duddy has an uphill climb if he ever wants to win a title in the middleweight division. However, he probably won’t need to make good money because he’s an Arturo Gatti-type fighter and is popular with boxing fans despite his lack of power and speed.

A fight against the young Chavez Jr. is an ideal fight for Duddy, because it’s an opponent that is perhaps nowhere near the talent of champions like Pavlik and Felix Sturm and Duddy would have a good chance of beating Chavez as long as he doesn’t run into too many of Chavez’s big shots and end up getting taken out.