By Jim Dower: WBA light heavyweight champion Beibut Shumenov (11-1, 7 KO’s) successfully defending his title against 40-year-old replacement opponent William Joppy (39-7-2, 30 KO’s) in a 6th round TKO on Saturday night at the Ice Mansion, in Schymkent, Kazakhstan. Shumenov, who was supposed to be fighting an unification bout with WBO light heavyweight champion Jurgen Braehmer, knocked Joppy down twice in the fight.
Shumenov dropped Joppy with a right to the head in the 5th and then finished him off with a left to the body in the 6th, which caused Joppy to go down to one knee and be counted out by the referee. Joppy, a former WBA middleweight champion, didn’t have the size, youth or power to compete with Shumenov and spent most of the bout taking hard combinations.
Shumenov put together his punches well and seemed to be trying to to get it over with as quick as possible. Joppy was able to land some nice shots every now and then, but he didn’t look to have enough size to compete against the much larger Shumenov. Joppy probably should have stayed at middleweight rather than moving up to super middleweight as he’s gotten older. He’s been beaten three out of his last four fights now and it’s pretty clear that he doesn’t have the size or power to compete against bigger super middleweights and especially against light heavyweights like Shumenov.
After the fight, Shumenov spoke about wanting to unify all the light heavyweight titles. It’s hard to imagine Shumenov doing that because he doesn’t seem be as talented as the better fighters in the division and he barely beat Gabriel Shumenov in their rematch last year. Many people think that Shumenov should have lost this fight as well. He was already beaten by Campillo in August 2008. It’s not a good sign for Shumenov that he’s struggling this badly against a fighter like Campillo, because there are a lot better fighters than this in the division.
In other action on the card:
Alexandr Zhuravskiy TKO 6 Ruben Galvan
Gayrat Ahmedov RTD 4 Tursunboy Abdullakimov
Ravshan Hudaynazarov TKO 10 Jose Luis Cruz