By Jim Dower: Former two-time World Boxing Association (WBA) super middleweight champion Anthony Mundine (40-3, 24 KO’s) defeated fellow Australian Ryan Waters (20-3-2, 12 KO’s) by a 10th round TKO on Wednesday night in a WBA junior middleweight title eliminator bout at the Entertainment Centre, Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia. Mundine, 35, hurt Waters with a flurry of shots at the end of the 9th round, and then at the start of the 10th, Mundine put him away with storm of punches that left Waters on the canvas.

Referee Will Soulos stopped the fight at 0:24 of the 10th. Mundine now is line to take on WBA junior middleweight champion Miguel Cotto in the near future. However, Mundine is going to take on the inexperienced Garth Wood (9-1-1, 5 KO’s) first. Woods, 32, is the recent winner of the Australian Contender super middleweight series.

Mundine had problems with the light hitting Waters in rounds one through four, as Waters continually pressured Mundine, causing him to back up and defend off the ropes. Waters basically unleashed prolonged flurries and although his punches were nowhere near as hard as Mundine, he was able to cause Mundine a lot of problems with his high volume punch output. Mundine landed some nice uppercuts and straight right hands in rounds one through four, but the punches had little effect on slowing down Waters. He kept coming forward and throwing punches in huge bunches. Waters didn’t look very good, but with all sheer number of punches he was throwing, it was causing Mundine some problems.

In the 4th round, Mundine was cut over the left eye from a flurry of shots from Waters. It’s Mundine’s own fault. He was covering up on the ropes looking like a sparring partner and he took a big shots from Waters. The cut was the result. Mundine continued to have problems with Waters’ pressure in the 5th round. Mundine threw a few flurries of his own but near the end of the round he was taking serious punishment from Waters.

Starting in the 6th, Mundine changed his fighting strategy by mixing in a lot of movement to keep Waters from overwhelming him punches. The movement worked, as Mundine was able to pick Waters off with jabs, left hooks and right hands during the round without getting hit a lot. Waters started off well in the 7th, as he was unloading with his usual flurry of shots. However, Mundine came alive in the last 20 seconds of the round and unloaded a massive amount of power shots to the head of Waters to steal the round.

Waters looked tired in the 8th round. He threw far fewer punches in that round than in his previous rounds. He looked tired and he began to take a lot of punishment from Mundine, who appeared to be warming up still. Late in the 9th round, Mundine staggered Waters with a right hand to the head. Munine then opened up a flurry of shots that Waters in big trouble as the round ended. At the start of the 10th, Mundine continued where he left off in the previous round by blasting Waters with one big shot after another as Waters stood with his back against the ropes trying to cover up. Finally, he went down from a hard left to the head. The fight was stopped immediately by the referee as Waters was in no condition to keep fighting.

Mundine isn’t as young as he used to be at 35, and he’s been taking it pretty easy since 2006 when he was easily beaten by Mikkel Kessler in a 12 round decision loss. Since then, Mundine has been focusing on fighting Australian opposition almost exclusively and he’s been able to fight success doing that. You can’t blame Mundine for milking his career, because it’s doubtful he could have beaten any of the top super middleweights like Joe Calzaghe, Andre Dirrell, Andre Ward, Lucian Bute, Jermain Taylor, Arthur Abraham or Allan Green in the past few years. He’s better off fighting and beating the guys in his own country rather than getting beaten by the top fighters.

In other action on the card:

Billy Dib KO 4 Jack Asis