By Dave Lahr: I honestly don’t know what all the crying and bellyaching is about with the Beibut Shumenov (9-1, 6 KO’s) 12 round split decision win over World Boxing Association light heavyweight champion Gabriel Campillo (19-3, 6 KO’s) on Friday night at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, in Las Vegas, Nevada. I had Shumenov winning by a round or two. Shumenov landed the much harder shots all the way through it and was the busier fighter during most of the first six rounds of the fight.
Shumenov did clearly faded in the last six rounds of the fight, but I still had him winning two of the last six rounds, which was more than enough to squeeze out a 12 round decision. That’s not to say that Shumenov looked good, because I thought he looked horrible. Shumenov has no stamina whatsoever, fights in a robotic, mechanical way, has little hand speed and like I said, his stamina is plain awful.
Shumenov looked tired after only three rounds of the fight. I’ve seen Shumenov in fights against Epifanio Mendoza, the first Campillo fight and Montell Griffin, and he showed the same problems with fatigue. However, it seemed even more pronounced in this fight, because Shumenov has changed his fighting style and is keeping his hands up more than he used to. In the past, Shumenov kept his hands down by his sides at all times and would get drilled a lot because of that.
Now, however, he keeps his hands up but does a rotten job of blocking any punches. Campillo had Shumenov backing up for most of the last six rounds of the fight. In the 9th round, Campillo hurt Shumenov with a left and a hard right hand. Shumenov took his eyes off Campillo and motioned to referee Jay Nady that he had been hit with an elbow.
Nady showed no reaction to Shumenov’s message. Campillo then teed off on Shumenov for the remainder of the round, battering him with huge head shots and causing Shumenov’s nose to bleed all over the place. The fight should have been arguably been stopped in the round, because Shumenov took an awful beating.
However, Campillo punched himself out and in the last seconds of the round, Shumenov came back and threw a handful of punches, missing all of them. Campillo was still tired in the 10th round, and Shumenov came back and won one of few rounds in the second half of the fight. In the 11th and 12th rounds, the action was very close and hard to tell who was getting the better of it. I gave Shumenov the 11th round because of the harder shots, but Campillo clearly won the 12th.
I think Shumenov deserved the win. I doubt that many of the people who are crying about the decision have actually seen the fight. If they had, they would see what I saw. Namely, that Shumenov worked hard in the first six rounds and won most of them with his much harder shots and higher work rate. Shumenov did run out of gas in the second half of the fight, but he won at least two, possibly three of those rounds with his harder shots. If anyone wants to complain about the decision, they should blame Campillo for not fighting harder during the first six rounds of the fight. He blew it.
But I’m not impressed with Shumenov in the least. I think Chad Dawson, Glen Johnson, Tavoris Cloud, Jean Pascal, Adrian Diaconu, Hugo Garay, Antonio Tarver, Karo Murat, Yusaf Mack, Bernard Hopkins, Roy Jones Jr. and Jurgen Brahmer would all dominate him easily.
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