By Scott Gilfoid: In a big upset, France’s Yvan Mendy (33-4-1, 16 KOs) defeated WBC International lightweight champion Luke Campbell (12-1, 10 KOs) by a 12 round split decision on Saturday night at the O2 Arena in London, UK.
The final judges’ scores were 115-112 and 115-113 for Mendy, and 115-113 for Campbell. The judge that scored the fight for Campbell was the British judge John Keane.
Mendy dropped Campbell in the 5th round. Campbell fought reasonably well after the knockdown, but he was getting hit too often by Mendy. The bone jarring shots were landed by Mendy in the fight. Every time I turned around, Campbell’s head was flying backwards from a big shot from Mendy. Campbell’s punches were mostly blocked. When Campbell did land, the power just wasn’t there. It makes me wonder if Campbell was weight drained because he’s looked stronger in the past. Tonight, he looked like a weakling in comparison to Mendy. The thing is Mendy isn’t a big puncher by any means, but he was snapping Campbell’s head back with tasty looking shots all night long and backing him up.
I don’t know how Campbell can come back from this loss. He was exposed in a way that suggests that he’s not going to be able to beat competition at this level. Mendy is a decent fighter, but they’re a lot better fighters in the lightweight division than him. Can you imagine Campbell getting in the ring with the unbeaten Felix Verdejo? Believe me, it wouldn’t be a pretty picture. We’re likely talking one-punch knockout win for Verdejo.
Campbell doesn’t have major punching power for the 135lb division. I think we found that out in this fight. If he had major power, he would have knocked Mendy out and moved past him. The fact that Campbell couldn’t do a job against a mediocre fighter like Mendy tells me that there’s really nowhere to go for Campbell. If he chooses to stay at lightweight, then he’s going to need to depend on his promoter Eddie Hearn matching him strategically to keep him away from more powerful fighters like Mendy, Jorge Linares, Terry Flanagan, and Ismael Barroso. The thing is there are other fighters besides them that have big punching power, and Campbell won’t be able to handle them either in my view.
It’s kind of a good thing that Mendy exposed Campbell this early in his career, because at least now Campbell can make an educated decision about whether he should retire now and save himself needless punishment, or choose to be a gate keeper type of fighter. Campbell doesn’t possess the power to move up to 140 to compete against the light welterweights, and I don’t think he can melt down to super featherweight to fight against the top guys in that weight division. That would really hard on Campbell’s body for him to try and melt down a division to super featherweight.
The win for Mendy was a good one of his career because it keeps him moving forward with his career.
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