By Jim Dower: In a complete mismatch, Tevin Farmer (26-4-1, 5 KOs) defeated former IBF 126 pound champion Billy Dib (43-5, 24 KOs) by a 12 unanimous decision to claim the vacant International Boxing Federation super featherweight title on Thursday night at the Technology Park in Sydney, Australia. The 32-year-old Dib retired from boxing following his loss. It’s probably a good thing Dib retired because he’s not going anywhere in the super featherweight division.
It’s good that the fight didn’t end in controversy, as Farmer was fighting in Dib’s venue in Sydney, Australia. When a visiting fighter travels to another fighter’s home country, you never know what can happen.
Despite winning the fight, Farmer didn’t look at all impressive. He looked better than Dib, but not much better. They both looked terrible. One didn’t get the sense that you could put Farmer in with the top super featherweights like Gervonta Davis, Miguel Berchelt, Alberto Machado and Masayuki Ito and expect him to come out of the fights with his hand raised at the end. Farmer isn’t that type of fighter. He’s more of a contender than a true champion. Of course, Farmer is one of the five world champions at 130, but only because the division is watered down with numerous world titles. With all the champions, it’s like having five Super Bowl champions. It’s ridiculous.
Farmer was landing the cleaner and harder landing shots throughout the contest. Dib has never been a puncher in his career, and that didn’t change for this match. He didn’t have the punching power to keep Farmer honest.
The 28-year-old Farmer knocked Dib down in the 9th round with a left to the head. Dib was totally over-matched from start to finish. The only round that you can argue that Dib deserved was the 7th, and even in that round, Farmer still landed the better shots. The judges scored it 118-109, 119-108, and 120-107. Boxing News 24 scored it for Farmer 120-107. Farmer appeared to win rounds 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12. The IBF needs to get a lot better in the way they rank fighters because anyone that has been following Dib’s career since he lost his IBF featherweight title in 2013 would know that he didn’t deserve the #3 ranking the IBF had given him at super featherweight.
Dib’s wins in the last 5 years were against guys that shouldn’t have given him even a bottom 15 ranking in my view, as he’s been beating awful opposition. Dib did not deserve to be rated above the likes of Tevin Farmer, Rene Alvarado and Lee Selby in the IBF’s top 15 rankings. The real question about this fight is why tonight’s Farmer-Dib fight happened in the first place, as Dib has done nothing in recent years to deserve the high ranking with the IBF.