https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_h9gXVS9nOg
By Jim Dower: Former IBO cruiserweight champion Danny “The Green Machine” Green (36-5, 28 KOs) got off to a fast start and was able to hold onto his early lead to win a 10 round majority decision over 41-year-old former WBC super middleweight champion Anthony Mundine (47-8, 27 KOs) on Friday night in their rematch at the Adelaide Oval, Adelaide, South Australia.
The judges scored the fight 94-94 even and 96-94, 98-90. Boxing News 24 scored the fight 7 rounds to 3 for Green. Mundine started too slowly before he finally began to take the fight to Green.
Mundine needed to use a high volume attack earlier in the fight rather than waiting until the 8th round to start throwing a lot of punches. Mundine didn’t show enough urgency in the first seven rounds for him to win the fight. He appeared to have the belief that he could beat Green with his Mayweather-like single right hands like he did in their first fight in 2006.
Back then, Mundine was too quick for Green, and he gave him a boxing lesson. 11 years later, Mundine lacked the hand speed to do the same job on Green, which is why he lost the fight tonight. Mundine didn’t use the right approach for his older 41-year-old body.
Green looked like the better fighter of the two. Mundine was throwing mainly jabs and looking to land pot shots. Most of the time, Mundine’s shots missed, and it was hard to give him rounds.
Mundine was deducted point in round 1 for hitting Green in the back of the head with a left hand after he was able to wrestle his way to get position behind him. Green was badly hurt by the cheap shot, and it was fortunate that he was able to continue fighting, because he was out on his feet from the illegal punch. In the 7th, Green was docked 1 point for an illegal punch. That point deduction was a lot more questionable, as both guys were doing a lot of rough stuff by that point in the fight.
Mundine started to take over the fight in the 8th round with his higher work rate, and his clean shots. However, Green was still competitive and landing shots. The 43-year-old Green didn’t look tired. He just wasn’t able to match the high work rate coming from Mundine in the last three rounds of the fight.
Mundine attempted to score a knockout in the 9th round, as he went after Green with a flurry of shots in the last minute of the round. However, most of Mundine’s shots missed badly. Mundine’s hand speed wasn’t fast enough for him to get the better of Green. That was the troubling thing, because Mundine used to be a fighter with blazing hands. However, age has taken away his speed, and now all he has left is his power. The power without the speed wasn’t enough for him to hurt Green in this fight other than in the 1st round when he hit him with a sucker punch with his back turned.
In round 3, Green beat Mundine to the punch with single right hands to the head and a lot of jabs. Mundine was trying to land single shots, but he was missing badly. Green was able to nail Mundine frequently with his right hands. The two fighters did a lot of mauling on the inside with both guys landing clubbing shots.
It all looked pretty cheap, as if they were trying to do damage with their mauling tactics. They would have been better off keeping it clean and beating each other up on the outside. However, it wasn’t easy for either of them do land their shots on the outside, because both guys looked so old. Their accuracy wasn’t there, so they hard time landing shots when they were on the outside.
Green continued to dominate the fight in round 4. He landed a lot of head-snapping jabs that caught Mundine square in the face. Mundine was trying to push the action, but he was waiting too long to throw his single shots. He was using the wrong approach to the fight. Instead of throwing combinations that would catch Green, Mundine was focusing on throwing single pot shots. In hindsight, it was the wrong approach to the fight. Mundine needed to be throwing combinations, because at least some of his shots would connect. With the way he did it, he stood on the outside and threw single pot shots, and he didn’t have the accuracy to land those shots. This allowed Green to pile up the rounds one by one.
The win for Green over Mundine avenges his loss from 11 years ago to Mundine on May 17, 2006. Mundine won that fight by a 12 round unanimous decision by the scores 116-113, 118-111 and 118-112. Mundine was a much better fighter back then, as he was still fast and very agile. He was very fast back then. It’s shocking how much slower Mundine is now compared to back then.
Green’s win over Mundine doesn’t mean he’s going to be able to compete with the best in the cruiserweight division. Green isn’t going to be able to compete with the likes of Oleksandr Usyk, Murat Gassiev, Denis Lebedev, Marco Huck, Tony Bellew, Mairis Briedis or Beibut Shumenov. Those fighters are on another level. Green hasn’t fought top level opposition since his back to back losses to Antonio Tarver and Krzysztof Wlodarczyk back in 2011. Since those losses, Green has beaten the following fighters: Danny Santiago, Shane Cameron, Roberto Feliciano Bolonti, Kane Watts and Mundine. None of those fighters are major players in the cruiserweight division.
The loss for Mundine was his third in his last four fights. He might want to think about retiring from boxing, because he’s not winning any longer and the chances of him turning things around with his career are low. Mundine didn’t fight at all in 2016 after losing to Charles Hatley by an 11th round knockout on November 11, 2015. That was a fight that took place in the 154lb division. Hatley is a good fighter, but not considered to be at the very top of the division. Mundine was easily beaten by Joshua Clottey by a 12 round unanimous decision three years ago on April 9, 2014. Clottey, considered to be over-the-hill by a lot of boxing fans, won that fight by the scores 116-108, 115-109 and 117-108. Mundine also lost to Daniel Geale by a 12 round unanimous decision on January 30, 2013. All in all, Mundine has lost 4 out of his last 7 fights in the last four years of his boxing career. Up until recently, Mundine had been calling out Floyd Mayweather Jr. After the loss to Hatley, Mundine not surprisingly hasn’t been as vocal about wanting to fight Mayweather.
If Mundine is going to continue his career, then he should probably think about moving up in weight to the super middleweight division once again, because he lacks the hand speed to be fighting at 154. Those guys are a lot faster than him. When you see Mundine struggling with the hand speed of a cruiserweight like 43-year-old Green, then it tells you that he lacks the speed to be fighting at 154.
Mundine will have a hard time having success no matter what division he fights in at this point. He’s too slow to compete with the top fighters in these weight classes. Mundine still has the power to win fights by knockouts, but his opponents can see his punches coming now, and this enables them to brace for the shots better than they were able to do in the past.