Cleverly decisions Krasniqi; Walsh defeats Harrison; Chisora stops Avila

By Boxing News - 04/20/2013 - Comments

krasniqi22By Scott Gilfoid: WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly (26-0, 12 KO’s) retained his title tonight with a lopsided 12 round unanimous decision win over his #1 WBO challenger Robin Krasniqi (39-3, 15 KO’s) at the Wembley Arena, in Wembley, London, United Kingdom. The final judges’ scores 120-108, 119-109, and 120-108.

I don’t agree with the scores because I had Krasniqi winning from two to three rounds of the fight. He was teeing off on Cleverly in the 6th and 7th rounds, and there’s no way you can give Cleverly every round when you look at what Krasniqi was doing to him in those rounds.

Cleverly hurt Krasnigi in the opening round when he tagged him with a right hand that seemed to jar him. Unfortunately for Cleverly, he didn’t have the power to finish off Krasniqi despite hitting him with everything but the kitchen sink. Krasniqi did a good job of surviving the round.

From rounds two through five, it was pretty one-sided with Cleverly hitting Kraniqi a lot of soft looking shots that failed to do anything other than keeping Krasniqi from getting his punches off. Going into the fight, I had noticed that Krasniqi had a problem with throwing enough punches to remain competitive against guys with a high work rate like Cleverly. Sure enough, that’s exactly by Krasniqi lost tonight. He simply didn’t throw enough punches to be competitive.

In the 6th and 7th rounds, Krasniqi came alive and tagged Cleverly with some tremendous right hand shots. There was a really big right hand in the 6th that Krasniqi hit Cleverly with that stopped him dead in his tracks and seemed to stun him. If Cleverly didn’t have such a good chin he would have been knocked out by that shot but he took it well, even though it stopped him from coming forward.

With this win, Cleverly will likely be defending his title against former WBO light heavyweight champion Jurgen Braehmer next. I know Clevely and his promoter would like to face Bernard Hopkins next in a unification match but that’s not going to happen. It’s going to be Braehmer or nothing.

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In an awful performance, former British/Commonwealth heavyweight championn Dereck Chisora (16-4, 10 KO’s) struggled to defeated 38-year-old journeyman Hector Alfredo Avila (20-13-1, 13 KO’s) by a 9th round stoppage. Avila was docked points in the 6th and 8th rounds for holding. In the 9, Chisora hit Avila with a series of hard shots that caused him to crouch down on the canvas. The referee then stopped the fight after Avila got back up, even though he wasn’t hurt.

Chisora looked slower and weaker than I can ever remember him looking. He looks like a shell of the fighter that fought Vitali Klitschko and Robert Helenius. Chisora and Avila looked pretty evenly matched in terms of power and physique and I can’t imagine Chisora beating anyone of quality at this point in his career. He seems to have aged since his loss to David Haye last year. Avila was hitting Chisora and awful lot tonight and had he a little more power I think he would have stopped him.

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Undefeated lightweight contender Liam Walsh (14-0, 10 KO’s) defeated former WBO featherweight champion Scott Harrison (27-3-2, 15 KO’s) by a 10 round unanimous decision. The fight was pretty close in the early going, but the 35-year-old Harrison ran out of gas in the 2nd half of the fight and was unable to close the distance to land his harder punches on a consistent enough basis to win. Walsh didn’t look like anything special. He just was busier with his jab and was able to keep distance between him and Harrison. Had this been a good fighter like Adrien Broner, Walsh would have been knocked out early.

Other boxing results on the card:

Paul Butler TKO 5 Yaqub Kareem
Enzo Maccarinelli TKO 6 Carl Wild
John Thain pts 8 Ryan Toms
Joe Murray pts 8 Dai Davies
Gary Corcoran pts 6 Mark McKray
Matty Fagan pts 4 Kristian Laight
Steve O’Meara pts 6 Chas Symonds



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