By Scott Gilfoid: Maurice Hooker (24-0-3, 16 KOs) used his size advantage to defeat former WBO lightweight champion Terry Flanagan (33-1, 13 KOs) by a 12 round split decision last Saturday night on the undercard of Tyson Fury vs. Sefer Seferi at the Manchester Arena in Manchester, England. The judges scored it 115-113, 117-111 for Hooker, and 117-111 for Flanagan. Boxing News 24 scored it 117-111 for Hooker.
The scoring by two of the judges was so far apart. It makes you wonder how two judges could see the same fight so differently. To me, it was a clear win for Hooker. You couldn’t give it to Flanagan unless you were scoring the fight based on his head-butting and rabbit punching, because he didn’t do nearly enough to win the fight.
Hooker was able to land his right hands with great accuracy in the fight, as he did a great job of timing Flanagan’s head-first ramming charges. If Flanagan had shown a little variation of his attacking style, he might have done better, but it looked like he had trained just for one style. Flanagan should have had a Plan-B for the fight, as his Plan-A game plan, which was clearly for him to ram Hooker with his head all night, it was a losing plan. Flanagan used his forearm a number of times to nail Hooker. The referee had to warn Flanagan, as he was getting out of hand in nailing the American with these illegal blows. After the second time, Flanagan should have been penalized, but the referee Terry O’Connor let it slide without taking off points.
This was the first fight for Flanagan in 13 months, and it’s not surprising that he looked so bad in the fight. I mean, when you take a year off between fights, you’re not going to do well, are you? Before this fight, Flanagan’s last contest was in April of 2017 against Petr Petrov, which he won by a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision in his last title defense of his WBO lightweight strap before he vacated it.
This was a pretty big upset victory for Hooker, who came into the fight as the underdog against the unbeaten Flanagan. After the fight, Hooker made it known that he’ll be joining the World Boxing Super Series 140 pound tournament. Hooker’s chances of making it out of the WBSS tournament with his WBO light welterweight title still in his possession are slim and none, as WBC interim light welterweight champion Regis Prograis is considered to be the early favorite to win the tournament and wind up with three of the four titles next year. Also in the tournament is Josh Taylor, WBA champion Kiryl Relikh, Ivan Baranchyk, Anthony Yigit and Eduard Troyanovsky. Flanagan was supposed to win this fight to become a 2-division world champion, but unfortunately he couldn’t handle the talent of the lanky American.
Flanagan was out-boxed throughout the contest by the highly skilled, taller 28-year-old Hooker. It looked to some boxing fans that Flanagan’s main game plan was to lower his head and ram head-first into the face of Hooker all night long, because he was doing that frequently during the 12 rounds. While this style of roughhouse tactics might have worked for Flanagan in the past, it didn’t prove to be effective against the tall, long-armed Hooker, who was quite adept and avoiding Flanagan’s bull-like charges with the crown of his head.
It was surprising that Hooker was given the ‘W’ in this fight, as he was the visiting fighter facing the Manchester native Flanagan in his own hometown. This is the World Boxing Organization 140lb title that Terence ‘Bud’ Crawford recently vacated after he decided to move up to 147 to campaign in the welterweight division. Hooker is obviously not in the same class as Crawford, but oh well. It doesn’t
matter. He’s now the new WBO 140lb champion in a division that traditionally doesn’t get much attention from the casual boxing fans. The last time the light welterweight division had a popular fighter as a champion was way back when Ricky Hatton held a title. Before Hatton, it was Kostya Tszyu that had a lot of fans while fighting at light welterweight.
In the past, the 5’9” Flanagan had used his huge size to dominate his opposition in fighting at lightweight. In that weight class, Flanagan was arguably a weight bully, as he would rehydrate and wind up looking like a junior middleweight. Last night, Flanagan was no longer the bigger fighter against the 5’11” Hooker and that left him in a bad position to try and win.
Flanagan tried hard as he could, but he gave away too many of the early rounds of the contest trying to figure out how to get to the long-armed Hooker without getting tagged. Flanagan was spending too much time fouling Hooker when he should have been concentrating on fighting him, because ramming him with his head and hitting him with rabbit punches was never going to be the key to winning the fight. It looked to me like Flanagan was hoping to wear Hooker down with his roughhouse tactics, hoping he’d break his spirit, cut him to ribbons and then take advantage of it when he starts fighting defensively to protect his cuts. But when Hooker was able to avoid being cut, it was Flanagan who wound up suffering a bad cut on his forehead from his bum rushing. Flanagan wasn’t putting enough effort into landing clean shots in the fight, and that made it too easy for Hooker to use his size to spear the shorter Flanagan from the outside. With a good trainer, Flanagan might have done better than he did, but unfortunately he didn’t have the right coach in his corner. I mean, when your game plan is to bum rush your opponent and ram them head first, it kind of tells you that you didn’t get the right training, because that’s too primitive of an approach to win a fight.
Flanagan was sliced to ribbons in the 7th round after he rammed heads with Hooker on two separate occasions that left him with a cut on his forehead and on the corner of his right eye. Once Flanagan’s blood began to drip down from his right eye and forehead, he lost his senses completely and went into the panic mode. Flanagan was already fighting like a wild man before he was cut, but once the blood began to drip, Flanagan started pushing the fight looking to make up for all the rounds that he lost.
Surprisingly, Flanagan was effective at times with his wild man approach, but Hooker was still getting the better of him most of the time due to all the chances that he was taking. Hooker was connecting well with shots. I gave Flanagan some rounds in the second half based on his aggression, as he was trying really hard. I give Flanagan credit for working hard to try and get back into the fight, but his boxing ability or lack thereof prevented him from doing enough to make up for all the rounds that he’d given away in the first half of the contest.
Hooker looked dreadful two years ago in fighting to a controversial 10 round draw against Darleys Perez in November 2016. Most boxing fans saw Perez easily winning that fight. A lot of the hype surrounding Hooker’s career disappeared after that fight, but he kind of revived his career last night in beating the ring rusty Flanagan. Unfortunately, Hooker is going now entering the World Boxing Super Series tournament where he’s going to have to tangle with the likes of Prograis and/or Baranchyk. One of those two are surely going to beat Hooker and take his WBO strap from him. As for Flanagan, his days of being a world title holder might be about over, because he’s not going to go back down to 135, and he doesn’t have the talent to beat the likes of Prograis and Jose Ramirez in my view.