By Scott Gilfoid: In a hopelessly one-sided fight, British heavyweight Anthony Joshua (12-0, 12 KOs) stopped Brazilian Raphael Zumbano Love (36-11-1 29 KOs) by a 2nd round knockout on Saturday night at Barclaycard Arena in Birmingham, UK. Joshua dropped the 34-year-old Love with a right hand in the 2nd round. Love attempted to get back to his feet in time to beat the count, but he didn’t do it in time and the fight was waived off.
Love hardly threw any punches in the fight. He mainly moved around the ring in circles and covered up. In watching Love fight, I don’t know this guy ever knocked out 29 opponents in the past.
Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn was quick to make excuses for the mismatch, saying that Love had gone rounds with Charles Martin and Shannon Briggs. Hearn sounded defensive in trying to explain why he put this mismatch together.
In speaking about his May 30th fight against 35-year-old journeyman Kevin Johnson, Joshua “It’s easy work for me.”
Kevin Johnson said “I know how to stop this guy. I’m going to knock the guy out. It’s easy, it’s going to be very easy.”
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32-year-old former three time world title challenger Matthew Macklin (32-6, 21 KOs) got back to his winning way in stopping little known Hungarian fighter Sandor Micsko (25-9-2, 19 KOs) in the 2nd round of a scheduled 8 round fight.
Macklin knocked the 28-year-old Micsko down with a hard body shot in the 2nd round. The fight was then stopped at 1:28 of the round. Micsko came into the fight having lost 2 out of his last 3 fights with both losses resulting from early knockouts.
In Micsko’s previous fight, he was knocked out in one round by Michel Soro last January. The fact that it took Macklin two rounds to get the job tells you a little bit about Macklin.
Macklin had been coming off of a 10th round knockout loss to Argentinian Jorge Sebastian Heiland last November.
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Undefeated super middleweight contender #4 WBC Callum Smith (16-0, 12 KOs) destroyed a badly overmatched Olegs Fedotovs (19-22, 13 KOs) by a 1st round knockout. The fight was stopped at 1:36 of the 1st round. What the 25-year-old Smith was doing fighting a guy with the record of the 19-22 Fedotovs is the big question. I mean, Fedotovs came into the fight having lost 9 out of his last 10 fights.
What in the heck is Smith doing fighting guys like that? It’s just very confusing, and it strikes one to believe that he just took the fight as a record padding type fight rather than one that will actually help him progress as a fighter.
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Undefeated 2012 Olympic lightweight gold medal winner Luke Campbell (11-0, 9 KOs) stayed unbeaten with a 3rd round knockout over an over-matched Aboubeker Bechelaghem (9-7-1, 0 KOs). The record of Campbell’s opponent speaks for itself. The time of the stoppage was 1:03.
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Welterweight Sam Eggington (15-2, 9 KOs) did what he had to do to beat a smaller Joseph Lamptey (18-6-1, 12 KOs) by a 7th round knockout to capture the vacant Commonwealth belt. Lamptey looked like he was two divisions smaller than the bigger Eggington. What a mismatch.
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What’s really disappointing about this card is all the mismatches. I haven’t seen one competitive fight on the entire card thus far and the main event between Anthony Joshua vs. Raphael Zumbano Love promises to be the biggest mismatch on the card in my view.
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