Bradley appeared to win the fight by a decision 12 round decision. However, the judges saw it differently, scoring it 116-112 for Chaves, 115-113 for Bradley and 114-114. The only think you could think of why Bradley came up empty in trying to get a victory is the collapse of his game in the last 4 rounds of the fight.
Bradley seemed to gas out from the heavy pressure from Chaves. While Chaves was missing a great deal of his power shots, he also was able to land more than enough to cause the smaller Bradley all kinds of problems. I’m not sure that Bradley was aware of how head-handed Chaves was coming into the fight.
Chavez proved to be a very difficult opponent due to his power and the pressure he put on him.
By the end of the fight, Bradley had a lot of welling around his left eye from the right hand bombs that Chaves kept hitting him with. After the fight, Bradley attributed some of the swelling due the head-butts that occurred early in the fight, but he also acknowledged that Chaves hit him with a lot of hard right hand in the fight.
Chaves was cut twice in the 2nd round after colliding accidentally with Bradley on two occasions. It was neither fighters’ fault. It was a case of both guys coming forward and ending up ramming heads.
“I thought I won the fight,” Bradley said afterwards. “We clashed heads right away. I feel I may have a fracture in my left cheekbone.”
You’ve got to give Bradley a lot of credit for electing to slug with Chaves, because he didn’t have to fight that way if he didn’t want to. Bradley elected to make the fight exciting for the fans, and he did a great job of that. He did enough to still deserve the win, but one of the judges felt that Chaves had fought well enough to deserve the decision despite the fact that Bradley dominated at least of the rounds.
“I thought it was a close fight,” Chaves said. “I thought I won the fight. I am not surprised what happened in the score.”
In the co-feature bout, #4 WBO Andy Lee (34-2, 23 KOs) knocked the normally stiff-chinned Matt Korobov (24-1, 13 KOs) in the 6th round to win the vacant World Boxing Organization middleweight title.
Lee hurt Korobov with a right hook in the 6th. Lee then flurried on the badly hurt Russian fighter until the fight was halted by referee Kenny Bayless at 1:10 of the round. There was no way that Korobov was going to be able to make it out of the round, so Bayless did the right thing in stopping it to protect him.
Lee seems to be getting better and better as he gets older. This was his 5th straight knockout win for the Irish fighter. He’ll now be defending his title against the WBO mandatory Billy Joe Saunders in his next fight. That’ll be a tough fight for Lee because Saunders is fast, hard to hit and he’s got a great chin.
In the most controversial fight on the card, interim WBA light welterweight champion Mauricio Herrera (21-5, 7 KOs) lost a 12 round unanimous decision against Top Rank fighter Jose Benavidez (22-0, 15 KOs.
Herrera dominated the fight and appeared to win at least 8 rounds easily. However, the judges scored the fight 116-112, 116-112 and 117-111. The decision was an unpopular one though, as the fans booed loudly. During most rounds, Herrera backed Benavidez up against the ropes and would pound his midsection while Benavidez looked to hold.
Other boxing results on the card:
Jose Carlos Ramirez TKO 6 Antonio Arellano
Denis Shafikov UD 8 Miguel Angel Mendoza
Sean Monaghan TKO 3 Daniel Regi
Mikael Zewski MD 10 Jeremy Bryan
Egidijus Kavaliauskas KO 2 Jaime Herrera
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