Mundine dominates Jerez

By Boxing News - 07/01/2010 - Comments

By Matt Stein: Former two-time super middleweight champion Anthony Mundine (39-3, 23 KO’s) easily beat Argentinian Carlos Adan Jerez (30-13-3, 16 KO’s) by a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision in a stay busy fight on Wednesday night to capture the vacant WBA International light middleweight title at the Entertainment Centre, in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. The final judges’ scores were 118-110, 118-110 and 120-109. Mundine, 35, looked good throughout in dominating his badly over-matched opponent.

Mundine landed whenever he wanted to, and then quickly backing away to the safety of the outside to limit some of Jerez’s counter shots. Still, however, Mundine seemed a tad slow in reacting and was hit cleanly by right hands from Jerez in most of the rounds of the fight. It could be that Mundine was experiencing some slight problems in adjusting the quicker light middleweight division or could be that Mundine is starting to show his age a little.

This was an opponent that Mundine should have been able to wipe out completely, as Jerez had been dominated in four out of his last seven fights doing into his bout with Mundine on Wednesday night, including a 5th round stoppage loss in his last fight to Leonard Bundo in March.

Mundine says he wants to fight WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto for his title. However, Mundine hasn’t done much in terms of fighting high caliber opposition in the past four years, and because of that, he’s not a high priority opponent for Cotto. He has much bigger money fights and well known opponents than Mundine to fight.

Mundine might do himself a world of good if he started to fight recognizable top fighters in the light middleweight division instead of fighting mostly opponents from his native Australia. Right now, few boxing fans, aside from the hardcore variety, have any idea who Mundine is in the United States. This makes it easy for fighters like Cotto to simply ignore Mundine because he doesn’t register with fans over here. I seriously doubt Mundine will start fighting top contenders in the light middleweight division.

Instead, I see him continuing fight Australians and hope that Cotto or one of the other light middleweight champions will want to fight him. They probably won’t. Since Mundine isn’t ranked in the top 15 in the light middleweight division, it could take him as much as two years before he can get a title shot against one of the champions, if he can keep winning. By then, Mundine will be 37, and it’s highly likely he will have started showing deterioration in his performances.

In other action on the card, the big punching heavyweight Travis Walker (34-5-1, 28 KO’s) was once again knocked out, this time by Australian Alex Leapai (19-3-3, 14 KO’s), who took Walker out in the 4th round of the bout of a scheduled 10 round bout. Both fighters took turns hurting each other. The 6’4″ Walker knocked Leapai down in the 3rd round. However, he looked to have exhausted himself in the process, as Leapai overwhelmed Walker in the 4th, hurting him and getting a stoppage win. This is Walker’s fourth stoppage loss in the past two years, and it really hurts his once promising career.



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