By Sean McDaniel: In a very controversial fight, former WBO cruiserweight champion Enzo Maccarinelli survived a 1st round knockdown in a shortened round to come back to defeat British cruiserweight champion Shane McPhilin by a 12 round unanimous decision on Friday night at the Civic Hall in Wolverhampton, West Midlands, UK. The final judges’ scores were 115-111, 116-111 and 115-111, all for Maccarinelli.
The interesting thing about this fight was how the times keeper ended the 1st round 47 seconds earlier than it as supposed to be. This mistake probably saved a badly hurt Maccarinelli from being knocked out, as he’d already been knocked down in the round and looked to be on the verge of being stopped when the bell was wrung by the times keeper. Maccarinelli, to his credit, recovered well and was able to dominate most of the remainder of the fight to win an eventual decision against an exhausted McPhilbin.
It seems that McPhilbin was pretty well spent after the first few rounds and never could recover to get his second wind. Maccarinelli had ample opportunities to end the fight with one big swing but he seemed unable to pull the trigger on his punches. Maybe he never did recover from the early knockdown or it could be that he was afraid of getting hit again and knocked off his feet again. Maccarinelli later on knocked McPhilbin down in the 9th round, but was unable to finish him off. Maccarinelli pretty much only had to jab for the rest of the way to dominate the tired out McPhilbin.
All in all, this was a terrible performance from Maccarinelli and no doubt there will likely be a rematch coming because of this. It’s not what Maccarinelli was hoping for when he chose to go after the British domestic title, as this was supposed to be a fairly simple matter of Maccarinelli taking the fight and crushing the inexperienced McPhilbin. However, Maccarinelli’s weak chin showed itself once again with him getting badly hurt in the 1st. What this means is it’s going to be incredibly hard for Maccarinelli to make a case for himself that he deserves a shot against WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly, even if he’s considered a paper champion in the minds of a lot of people. Maccarinelli really should have thought twice about moving back up to the cruiserweight division after having recently moved down to 175. Moving back and forth between divisions is a young man’s thing, not a fighter in his 30s, who has suffered multiple serious knockouts in the past few years like Maccarinelli.
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