By Allan Fox: Last night, the 6’4” Guillermo Jones (39-3-2, 31 KO’s) stopped WBA cruiserweight champion Denis Lebedev (25-2, 19 KO’s) in the 11th round at the Crocus City Hall in Moscow, Russia. Jones knocked badly hurt Lebedev down in the 11th round, and Lebedev wisely chose not to get back up and was counted out.
Where the controversy arises from this fight is why it wasn’t stopped earlier in the fight when Lebedev’s right close closed up completely in the 6th round.
Fighting with only vision of his left eye, Lebedev took a ton of punishment for the next five rounds before he was knocked down and stopped in the 11th.
By that time in the fight, Lebedev’s right eye had swollen up badly with what looked like a huge hematoma. The only thing that I’ve seen that can compare to that was the big swelling on the forehead of Hasim Rahman had in his loss to Evander Holyfield many years ago in 2002.
In that case the fight was stopped in the 8th round due to the swelling. In the case of the Lebedev, the fight was allowed to continue until he stopped by getting knocked down.
At the time of the stoppage all three judges had Lebedev ahead on the scorecards by the scores of 96-94, 97-93 and 96-94. There’s no question that Lebedev had done enough to have a lead, as Jones appeared to have gassed out after the 4th round, and he gave away most of the middle rounds of the fight.
However, starting in the 9th round, Jones got his second wind and he began to nail Lebedev with a lot of shots to the head, and especially to his swollen right eye. Jones didn’t look like he was throwing with a lot of power, but it didn’t matter.
Lebedev’s right eye was so swollen up by that point in the fight that any contact being made on it was not a good thing.
One can only hope that Lebedev doesn’t have permanent damage to his eye from this fight because it’s not worth it for a fighter to mess with their health for the sake of one fight.
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