Ustinov Defeats Abramyan

ustinov352212.jpgBy Erik Schmidt: Undefeated heavyweight prospect Alexander Ustinov (10-0, 8 KOs) continued with his progress in defeating unbeaten Rudolf Abramyan (11-1, 10 KOs) by an 8-round unanimous decision on Friday night at the Sportspalce Lokomotiv, in Kharkov, Ukraine. Ustinov, a 6’7” 300 lb heavyweight from Belasrus now being promoted by the Klitschko brother’s K2 East promotional company, looked very impressive in dominating Abramyan for the entire 8-round bout. It wasn’t as if the previously undefeated Abramyan, 22, wasn’t trying, for he attacked Ustinov constantly during the fight, but Ustinov’s huge reach, left hook and straight right hand gave him a tremendous amount of problems .

The fight started slowly in the first round as the big bear-like Ustinov used his long jab as a range finder, measuring Abramyan and looking to set him up for his right hand. Ustinov, who fights much like Vitali Klitschko, whom he has sparred with in the past, began to open up with right hands at mind point in the round. Abramyan didn’t seem to mind, though, as he continued pressing forward trying to get into punching range. By the end of the round, Abramyan’s face was turning red from having been hit with several huge right hands from Ustinov.

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Oliver Güttel Decisions Aries

aries46335.jpgBy Erik Schmidt: Welterweight Oliver Guettel (13-1, 7 KOs) overcame a 1st round knockdown to come back and defeat Ilian Aries (14-2, 8 KOs) by a 10-round unanimous decision to win the WBC World Youth welterweight title on Friday night at the Ballhaus Arena, Aschersleben, in Sachesen-Anhalt, Germany. Guettel, 23, started off well in the first round, landing jabs and left hooks to the head of Aries, 22. However, just when it appeared to be an easy round for Guettel, Aries, the harder puncher of the two, landed a big left hand that knocked Guettel back into the ropes, where he hung there for a moment, nearly defenseless until the referee stopped the action and counted it as a knockdown. Aries, however, was unable to finish Guettel off despite unloading everything but the kitchen sink on him trying to taking him out.

Guettel looked good in rounds two through six, using a constant jab to prevent Aries from setting up his own offense. Aries continued to be the aggressor, but he was finding it increasingly difficult to make it beyond Guettel’s excellent jab, which was being driven into his face over and over again seemingly without stop. Guettel’s power was nothing to speak of, and probably couldn’t break an egg, but his boxing skills were superb. In the 3rd round, Guettel’s mouth piece was knocked out by a hard right hand from Aries, something that would have a couple of more times in the fight, making Aries angry, for it seemed to occur just when Guettel was taking some particularly hard shots.

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Provodnikov Defeats Gordon

provodnikov452.jpgBy Nate Anderson: In one of the more exciting bouts on Friday’s fight card on ESPN, undefeated light middleweight prospect Ruslan Provodnikov (8-0, 6 KOs) fought a war with previously undefeated Brian Gordon (4-1, 4 KOs), defeating him by a 6-round unanimous decision. The final judges’ scores were 59-55, 58-56 and 60-54. I personally had the fight scored a draw because Gordon , 28, appeared to out-land the 24 year-old Provodnikov in every round of the fight.

However, Gordon didn’t have the same kind of power as Provodnikov, who reminded me a lot of a smaller version of Vassily Jirov. Like Jirov, Provodnikov showed crushing power to the body, where he was able to hurt Gordon on a couple of occasions, especially early on in the fight. However, Provodnikov had little power when it came to landing head shots, and both his defense and stamina were badly lacking.

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Branco Defeats Lynes

bronko4623.jpgBy Scott Gilfoid: Italian light welterweight Gianluca Branco (41-2-1, 21 KOs) defeated Britain’s Colin Lynes (31-4, 12 KOs) by a 12-round split decision to take away his EBU (European) light welterweight title tonight at the PalaRuffini, Torino, in Piemonte, Italy. Branco, 37, did little in the first half of the fight, seeming to lose all six rounds. To make matters worse, Branco was knocked down in the 2nd round. After six rounds, it looked like an easy night for Lynes, 30, who was faster and had much better defensive skills than the slow-footed Branco. However, starting in the 7th round, Branco began to land heavy shots and appeared to hurt Lynes at the end of the round with a couple of big right hands.

It appeared that Lynes did more than enough in the final five rounds to get the decision, appearing to win both the 9th and 10th rounds and then giving away the final 11th and 12th to Branco. I wasn’t all the surprised that Branco ended up with the decision, though, because the fight was fought in Italy, Branco’s home, and figured it was par for the course. Despite being the champion, Lynes would have to fight as if he were the challenger in order to ensure that he got to hold onto his title given the situation.

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Torres And Fernandez Fight To A Draw

torres4633.jpgBy Nate Anderson: In one of the poorer scored fights I can recall seeing, light welterweight prospect Joel Torres (9-0-1, 5 KOs) and Christopher Fernandez (15-4-1, 9 KOs) fought to an 8-round draw on Wednesday night at the Gotham Hall, in New York, New York. The final judges’ scores were 77-75, for Torres, 78-74, for Fernandez and the third judge scored it 76-76. I personally had Torres winning by several rounds, but I suppose the judges’ can’t be blamed because Torres, who had came into the fight as the one expected to win, was hardly impressive to say the least. In fact, both fighters looked bad and fought a mostly boring fight, holding often and landing few hard shots in the fight.

Torres concentrated mostly on the midsection of Fernandez in the opening round, hitting him with hooks repeatedly. Fernandez, the bigger and stronger guy, allowed the shorter Torres to crowd him. Although Fernandez, 32, seemed to relish the idea of fighting on the inside for some reason, often coming in close to Torres and trying to out-punch him at close quarters. Being the shorter guy, Torres seemed more than happy to oblige Fernandez with his inside fighting game and freely fire back with short punches. The punches were terribly weak, however, which is where the judges’ probably figured that Fernandez was doing better, even though he was landing much less frequently than Torres. So far, I was coming close to being impressed with neither fighter.

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Figueroa Decisions Rodriguez

fig432.jpgBy Nate Anderson: Light welterweight prospect Francisco Figueroa (19-2, 13 KOs) defeated Luis Rodriguez (22-2, 13 KOs) by a 12-round unanimous decision on Wednesday night to retain his NABF light welterweight title at the Gotham Hall, in New York, New York. The final judges’ scores were 118-110, 117-111 and 116-112, all for Figueroa. Going into the fight, the 23 year-old Rodriguez was thought to have been able to make this a close fight based on his excellent record. However, at once glance of his record, with all of the fights taking place against unknown opposition, I should have been more skeptical about his chances in the fight.

Built like a tall string bean, Rodriguez rarely used his height to his advantage against the much shorter Figueroa. Instead, Rodriguez allowed t Figueroa to bull his way to the inside and stay there for most of the fight, hitting Rodriguez over and over with short head shots. In fact, Rodriguez took an awful lot of head shots for a fight with such a low level title at stake. With the fight going very much against him in the later rounds of the fight, he may have been better off if he had just folded his cards and quit on his stool in between rounds, especially considering he had no power to speak of an almost a zero chance of scoring a knockout of Figueroa.

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Truscott Defeats Akaba

truesot4.jpgBy Chris Williams: Undefeated British featherweight Paul Truscott (11-0, 1 KOs) defeated Osumanu Akaba (10-4, 8 KOs) by a tough 12-round unanimous decision on Friday night to win the vacant Commonwealth (British Empire) featherweight title at the Eston Sports Academy, Middlesbrough, in Yorkshire. Truscott, only 22, traded rounds with the hard-hitting Akaba, who refused to give any ground to the highly skilled Truscott. The final judges’ scores were 116-112, 115-113 and 116-112, all for Truscott. Many of the rounds were very close and difficult to score because Akaba often wouldn’t land as many shots as Truscott, yet his punches were much harder than the weaker-punching Truscott.

In the first round, it appeared that Akaba would simply be too strong for the rail-thin Truscott as landed a high number of powerful hooks to the head of Truscott. However, after being dominated for the first two minutes of the round, Truscott showed what was in store for Akaba later on in the fight, as he began to return fire with piercing combinations and excellent hooks. Though his punches were not even close to being as hard as Akaba, they were thrown with excellent form and were quite constant in nature.

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Sanchez Decisions Thompson

sanchez464323.jpgBy Manuel Perez: Fresh off his 6th round stoppage at the hands of Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., in December 2007, light middleweight Ray Sanchez (21-2, 15 KOs) squeezed out a close 10-round majority decision over Patrick Thompson (13-13-1, 5 KOs) on Friday night at the Isleta Casino & Resort, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The final judges’ scores were 97-93, 96-94 and 95-95. It was a mostly ugly fight with Sanchez doing a lot of running and clinching for most of the bout, and landing counter shots whenever he’d spot an opening in the defense of Thompson.

For his part, Thompson, 35, put a lot of pressure on Sanchez for the entire fight, keeping him against the ropes for much of the action where Thompson would land mostly body shots and a small amount of uppercuts. It looked overall as if Thompson had done more than enough to get the decision but the outcome came to no surprise to me because Sanchez was fighting in his own hometown. Some in the audience weren’t in full agreement with the ultimate decision, however, as they loudly booed Sanchez afterwards. Like I said, he looked to have lost the fight by at least 1-2 rounds, and wasn’t the one making the fight.

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Murray Decisions Hamidi

murray4432.jpgBy Scott Gilfoid: In an especially badly scored fight, BBBofC English lightweight champion John Murray (24-0, 12 KOs) defeated Youssef Al Hamidi (4-9-1, 1 KOs) in a scheduled 8-round bout at the Nottingham Arena in Nottinghamshire, England on Saturday night. Murray, 23, won by the score of 77-75, which seemed like a gift decision because it was Hamidi who appeared to win six of the first eight rounds of the fight. Many in the crowd hated the decision and gave a chorus of boos to Murray, letting them know what they thought of the decision. To say that Murray struggled against Hamidi would be putting it lightly.

In most of the rounds of the fight, Murray couldn’t lay a glove on Hamidi, as he followed him around the ring taking repeated shots from the 5’5” Syrian born fighter. Up until the 7th round, Murray was only able to land in the single digits against the elusive Hamidi, who used foot movement and twists of his torso to dodge the slow and labored punching style of Murray. In terms of speed, Murray has got to be one of the slowest punching lightweights I’ve seen, and it’s frankly astonishing that he’s a champion of anything. Whatever the case, he may have got the decision but he didn’t win the fight, not as far as I’m concerned. That was a case of a fighter winning when they shouldn’t have.

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Arnaoutis Defeats Tyner, Vargas Stops Brunelli

arnaoutis46453.jpgBy Nate Anderson: #15 IBF ranked light welterweight contender Mike Arnaoutis (19-2, 9 KOs) easily defeated a badly overmatched and previously unbeaten Lanardo Tyner (19-1, 11 KOs) by a lopsided 12-round unanimous decision on Friday night at the Bally’s Hotel & Casino, in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The final judges’ scores were 118-110, 118-110 and 116-112. Speaking of overmatched opponents, on the undercard undefeated heavyweight prospect Devin Vargas (16-0, 7 KOs) flattened Dave Brunelli (8-4, 2 KOs) in the 1st round.

Going into Friday’s bout, Tyner, 32, had done a lot of talking about how he was going to take Arnaoutis to school in the ring. However, it was immediately clear in the first round that Tyner didn’t have the skills with which to back up his claims and it would be he who would be getting a boxing lesson. The southpaw Arnaoutis, 28, used a lot of jabs and straight left hands in the 1st round to easily win the round. Tyner attempted to crowd him as much as possible, working his way in close where he was able to land some good shots. However, Tyner’s hand speed was lacking and so was his work rate, which wasn’t nearly as high as the busy Arnaoutis.

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