Shiming stops Kokietgym; Vazquez decisions Shafikov

By Boxing News - 02/23/2014 - Comments

By Chris Williams: Undefeated Zou Shiming (4-0, 1 KO’s) registered his first knockout of his career in defeating an over-matched little known fighter named Yokthong Kokietgym 15-4, 11 KO’s) in the 7th round of a scheduled 8th round fight on Saturday night at the Cotai Arena, Venetian Resort, Macao, Macao S.A.R., China. Shiming knocked the 19-year-old Kokietgym down three times in the 7th round to get the stoppage.

Referee Danrex Tapdasan, Esq. halted the fight at 2:09 of the 7th round. The referee appeared to blow a call on a knockdown of Shiming in the 7th round in which he was hit with a hard right hand by Kokietgym and put on his back. Replays show that Shiming was clearly knocked down by a right hand from Kokietgym, but the referee instead ruled it a slip. Luckily the blown call didn’t affect the outcome of the fight, as Kokietgym was soon knocked out.

Like in his three previous fights, Shiming didn’t look good in the fight. He was hit frequently, and he showed little in the way of power or defense. He got the knockout, but he had a poor opponent in front of him tonight that was the perfect guy to knockout. If Shiming couldn’t knock this guy out then he might as well have retired on the sport. Kokietgym was knocked out in the 2nd round by Ryuji Hara in April of 2012. Kokietgym was also knocked out in the 3rd round by Petchwanchai Sor Visetkit in February of 2012.

The fact that Shiming had to struggle to beat Kokietgym suggests that he’s not going to go far in the flyweight division. Top Rank is talking about wanting to have Shiming challenge for a title in November or December of this year against IBF flyweight champion Amnet Ruenroeng. This is a fighter that Fightnews doesn’t even have ranked in the top 16 in the division. Perhaps the only reason that Ruenroeng was able to win a world title was because the title was vacant and the International Boxing Federation selected Rocky Fuentes (35-7-2, 20 KO’s) instead of arguably much superior fighters like Giovanni Segura, Hernan Marquez, Moruti Mthalane, Brian Viloria, Edgar Sosa, Juan Reveco and Luis Concepcion.

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Making his first title defense in well over a year since December of 2012, IBF lightweight champion Miguel Vazquez (34-3, 13 KO’s) was able to out-box Russian Denis Shafikov (33-1-1, 17 KO’s) in winning by a 12 round unanimous decision. The judges scores were 115-113, 116-112, 119-109. The 119-109 was the score I had for the fight, as Shafikov was just taking shots for the first 6 rounds of the fight and rarely throwing punches back at Vazquez.

In the 7th round, Shafikov started pressing the action more, which resulted in a number of head butts. He was cut over the right eye from one clash of head. Shafikov was able to land some good shots in the final five rounds of the fight, but Vazquez continued to hit him a lot more frequently. Vazquez tired a lot in the 2nd half of the fight due to the constant moving he was doing as well as the pressure that Shafikov was putting on him. Shafikov didn’t have the work rate in order to put Vazquez under and serious pressure.



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