By Chris Williams: WBO Latino lightweight champion Felix Verdejo (20-0, 14 KOs) had to struggle to beat challenger William Silva (23-1, 14 KOs) by a 10 round unanimous decision on Saturday night in a fight televised by HBO Championship Boxing at Madison Square Garden in New York. The final judges’ scores were 100-90, 100-90 and 99-91.
Verdjo had problems with Silva’s height, reach and pressure in this fight. Silva was able to land some nice shots and avoid Verdejo’s punches all night long. Verdejo was still able to land some big shots in every round, but it was always single shots and never combinations.
In the 10th, Verdejo connected on a big left hook while being pressured. It was easily the best punch he landed in the fight. However, it had no effect on Silva, who backed up a second and then continued to press forward. Verdejo didn’t follow it up with combinations. He just kept throwing single shots and Silva had no problems getting out of the way of those punches.
The Verdejo-Silva fight is the co-feature bout on the Terence Crawford vs. Hank Lundy card. Verdejo, 22, came into the fight with a lot of hype behind him. His promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank sees him as a potential star in the future. However, Verdejo looked pletty flawed to tonight in having to battle hard to win a boring 10 round unanimous decision over the 6’1″ Silva. The Madison Square Garden crowd acted restless, as they wanted to see a fight, but instead they saw a boring boxing match.
Verdejo was throwing one punch at a time all night long, as looking like he expected Silva to fall over with each single shot that he threw. What we learned was that Verdejo is not able to KO the better fighters like he was doing earlier in his career against the weak 3rd tier jobs that Top Rank was putting him in with. Verdejo reminds me a lot of how good Thomas Dulorme looked earlier in his career when he was knocking out everybody he faced. That was when Dulorme was being put in with horrible opposition too. When Dulorme was stepped up to 1st tier opposition, the wheels quickly came off and we found out that he wasn’t what people thought he was.
I think we’re going to need to re-think the idea of Verdejo becoming a big start in the future because I don’t think he’s the guy. He doesn’t throw combinations, and he doesn’t react well to pressure. Top Rank might need to go back to the well to find someone else as their replacement for Manny Pacquiao, because I don’t think Verdejo is the guy.
If Top Rank is going to try and push Verdejo to become the replacement for Pacquiao, then they’re going to need to change his fighting style completely, because he was shying away from contact tonight instead of going forward looking to make things happen. Verdejo doesn’t throw combinations. He’s too much of a pot shot fighter, and he doesn’t look highly skilled or hard to hit.
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