By Allan Fox: 42-year-old Tony Thompson (38-4, 16 KO’s) beat a lazy-looking Odlanier Solis (20-2, 13 KO’s) by a 12 round split decision on Saturday night to capture the vacant WBC International heavyweight title at the Tekirdag, Turkey. The final judges scores were 115-114, 115-113 for Thompson. The final judges had it 116-112 for Solis. Thompson appeared to win 11 of the 12 rounds in my scoring of the fight. The only round that Solis fought well enough to win was the 2nd. All the rest of the rounds he was badly outworked by the older and much bigger Thompson.
Thompson, 6’5″, had too much size for the smaller 6’1″ Solis in this fight, and most of the rounds saw Solis being jabbed constantly in the face. Thompson wasn’t putting much power in his shots, but he was throwing nonstop punches that Solis had no answer for. Occasionally, Solis would throw a few shots, but mostly he just stood and covered up. Solis had the better power, but he would frequently miss with his shots when trying to nail Thompson.
Solis had the power and speed to win this fight if he had just let his hands go a lot more. But he looked really lazy and unwilling to go after the taller Thompson for some reason. Compared to some of his recent fights, Solis looked in pretty good shape. He was carrying around a lot of flab, but he was still in much better shape that he’d been recently.
In the 11th round, Solis was cut on the side of his right eye. It was just a small cut.
While Solis technically lives in the U.S., he was the home fighter in this bout because his promoter is from Turkey. It wasn’t surprising that the scores were so far off base given that Thompson was the visiting fighter. The fight had open scoring, and one judge had Solis winning the first four rounds of the fight despite the fact that Thompson was literally hitting Solis at will in rounds 1,3 and 4. It was pretty disappointing scoring from that judge. The scores after four rounds were 39-37, 40-36 and 39-37, all for Solis. As I mentioned, Solis fought well enough to win one of the first four rounds of the fight. After the scores were announced, Thompson tore into Solis even more than he had before, and totally dominated him for the next four rounds. The scores after 8 rounds were as such: 77-75, 77-75 for Thompson, and 78-74 for Solis. Again, the one judge had the oddball scoring for the fight in giving Solis the lead.
With this loss it’s difficult to say where Solis should go. He might be better off retiring from the sport, because if he can’t even beat an older fighter like Thompson, then there’s place for him to go.
Comments are closed.