By Scott Gilfoid: In the robbery of the century, Anthony Crolla (26-4-1,9 KO’s) defeated Gavin Rees (37-3-1, 18 KO’s) by a 12 round majority decision on Saturday night to capture the vacant WBO Inter-Continental lightweight title at the Bolton Arena, Bolton, Lancashire, United Kingdom.
The final judges scores were 115-113 and 116-113 for Crolla, and 115-115 even. I had Rees winning 10 rounds to 2.
Rees completely outworked Crolla from the 4th round on, winning all the rounds on my scorecard with the exception of the 11th.
The thing about this fight was that the crowd was cheering like crazy for Crolla. I figured that Rees would need a knockout when I heard the crowd and noticed that the Sky Sports guys were all over Crolla. Rees being the visiting fighter, he pretty much was in a situation where he would have had to really batter him to get the win.
If this fight were held in a neutral venue, I think Rees would have easily won the fight.
Both Rees and his trainer Gary Lockett both thought that they won the fight, and I agree with them.
I had a feeling that Rees was really up against it in the early rounds when he was clearly out-Crolla by a wide, wide margin, and yet the Sky Sports announcers were talking about how great Crolla and how he was dominating the action. I couldn’t be believe my eyes because I was watching Rees landing ALL the power shots, and Crolla was doing was landing an occasional jab. Round after round, Rees dominated and the crowd went wild for every miss that Crolla had.
The really sad thing about this fight is that Crolla will now likely fight WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns next. That’ll be Burns’ second straight optional defense, and I’m hoping the World Boxing Organization says no to that and forces Burns to fight his mandatory challenger because Burns is fighting #8 WBO Raymundo Beltran next in September. How on earth can Burns fight two optional defenses back to back? That’s just wrong. Burns should have to fight his mandatory challenger after the Beltran fight, and that sure as heck isn’t Crolla. He isn’t even ranked in the top 15 by the WBO. How can Crolla be given a title shot against Burns over the likes of #1 WBO Sergio Thompson and #2 Omar Figueroa?
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Other boxing results on the card:
Paul Smith TKO 6 Tony Dodson
Scott Quigg TKO 3 William Prado
Brian Rose pts 6 Alexey Ribchev
Thomas Stalker KO 1 Gyula Vajda
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