By Dan Ambrose: Unbeaten #6 IBF, #6 WBO light welterweight contender Maurice Hooker (21-0-3, 16 KOs) fought to a controversial 10 round draw against former WBA lightweight champion Darleys Perez (33-2-2, 21 KOs) on Saturday night at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The results of the fight was highly controversial, as Hooker, 27, appeared to lose the fight by a wide margin in the eyes of Boxing News 24. We had Perez winning the fight 8 rounds to 2. The judges scored the fight 97-93 Perez, 97-93 Hooker, and 95-95 even. One judge appeared to score the fight correctly in scoring it 97-93 for Perez. The other two judges saw a different fight from the one I saw.
Hooker looked really poor in the first six rounds of the fight, as he was just moving around the ring without attacking. It was Perez who was doing all the attacking in the first six rounds. When Hooker throw shots, he usually backing away as he was throwing, which resulted in his shots lacking power. Even when the lanky Hooker was throwing power shots, he had his feet moving backwards to prevent him from getting countered by Perez.
In rounds 7 and 8, Hooker fought well enough to barely win the rounds. Those were clearly the best rounds of the fight for Hook. He was able to connect with some looking shots to the head of Perez, and nail him with jabs. Perez didn’t do much in either of those rounds.
Perez came back strong in rounds 9 and 10 to nail Hooker with heavy lefts and rights to the head. Hooker kept backing away and trying to avoid the action. It’s unclear why though, because his trainer had told him in harsh language that he needed a knockdown. Even the trainer had a good idea that Hooker was losing the fight. I guess the judges didn’t get the news that Hooker was clearly losing the fight, because two of them failed to give the win to Perez.
It’s not all that surprising that Perez didn’t get the victory. He came into the fight as the opponent for Hooker, who’s promoters were part of the promotion. Perez was just the B-side fighter for the A-side Hooker.
It’s too bad that the Hooker-Perez fight results had to hurt what was a good card, because it’s always bad when you had bad decisions on a good card. The boxing fans loudly booed the judges’ decision in letting them know that they didn’t agree with it.
It’s unclear now if there will be a rematch between Hooker and Perez or if the two fighters will go their separate ways. My guess is there won’t be a rematch. Hooker will face someone else next. It wouldn’t be surprising if Hooker gets a title shot off of this performance. As for Perez, it’s another bad outcome for him. Perez lost his WBA lightweight title to Anthony Crolla ijn 2015 in getting stopped in the 5th round in Manchester, England. Perez won his last fight against Ubadel Soto. Tonight’s fight has got to hurt though for Perez. He’s going to need to keep working to try and get back to title contention.
Hooker’s management need to look at his performance tonight and realize that their fighter is not really to fight the top guys yet. He was stepping up a level in facing the 33-year-old Perez, and he clearly failed the test. Hooker needs a lot more work before he’s ready to fight champions like WBA light welterweight champion Ricky Burns or WBC/WBO champion Terence Crawford. Those guys look a lot better than Hooker right now.