By William Mackay: Unbeaten EBU lightweight champion John Murray (31-0, 18 KO’s) kept his unbeaten record intact by defeating Spanish challenger Karim El Ouazghari (11-2, 4 KO’s) by a 12 round decision on Saturday night at the York Hall in London. The final judges’ scores were 116-110, 117-111 and 115-112.

If this was supposed to be a fight which signaled that Murray is ready to finally start taking on top tier opposition then Murray utterly failed because he looked positively awful all fight long. Ouazghari was tagging Murray at will with left hands, catching Murray as he would plod forward. Murray might as well have had a hit me sign tapped to his forehead because he took a lot of shots to the head in this fight and his face was red from all the blows he had eaten.

Murray was given credit for a knockdown in the 11th, which looked like a nice wrestling take down. The referee really blew that call. Ouazghari lost a point for an attempted head clash in the same round. But then Murray lost a point for throwing a rabbit punch in the 12th.

All in all, Murray barely beat Ouazghari and looked pretty much like a limited 2nd tier fighter. After this fight, I think Murray needs to forget about trying to tackle world class opposition and instead just working on defending his EBU belt until he starts to show some improvement. I wouldn’t want to see Murray get massacred by someone like Humberto Soto or Brando Rios.

In other action, unbeaten middleweight prospect Billy Joe Saunders (8-0, 5 KOs) took out Turgay Uzun (35-16-2, 22 KOs) by a 2nd round TKO. Uzun was down once in the 2nd round.