Review of the Fights (01/10/23)

The first fight of the evening was broadcast from Turkey and showed two heavyweight contenders in a title eliminator. Wallin entered the bout as the guy who cut Fury and really hasn’t done anything notable outside of that fight. Gassiev in the other hand had been unified world champion at Cruiserweight and notably got dominated against Usyk in the final of the world boxing super series. This fight was interesting because Gassiev hits like a truck and if he caught Wallin clean then he would most likely wake up on the canvas. The flip side though was that Wallin and his style was all wrong for Gassiev who struggles with pure boxers. I expected Gassiev to land something big in the fight and change it drastically leading to a stoppage for him but due to a lower work rate and not enough intelligence in his offence, Gassiev was easily beaten over the 12 rounds. It was disappointing but I did see a world where this happened. Wallin clearly is a solid contender and I think he gives some periphery world level guys trouble.

The only fight I saw on the Matchroom card was the main event between the best Cruiserweight in the world Jai Opetaia and Jordan Thompson who shouldn’t have been anywhere near the ring with Opetaia. He was dominated and couldn’t cope with Opetaia’s combination of speed, power and ring IQ. Jai really is a star and I hope we get to see him contend with the best at Cruiserweight because he could beat them all. Maybe he could even drag Lawrence Okolie into a good fight.

The first fight on the Showtime card that I caught was the battle between two welterweight contender trying to get in line for a title when Crawford vacates. I picked Ugas in this fight as he seemed like the more experienced and better counter puncher. I completely overlooked 2 massive factors though. I overlooked the age and the eye of Ugas. I didn’t realise Ugas was 37 and he looked it in the ring. He was hesitant to pull the trigger and the year and a half layoff also didn’t help his timing. Still he was in the fight for the first half before his eye started to swell up badly. It was almost a repeat of the Spence fight where Ugas had his orbital bone fractured. Ugas clearly hasn’t recovered from it and it cost him this fight. Not to downplay Barrios however as he was very game like always and this is probably the best I’ve seen him. His jab was very sharp and he boxed well. He is a journeyman for world level though. If you can beat him you are in line for a world title. With Crawford vacating the belts though Barrios could be in line for a crack at one of the belts he just better hope it’s not against Boots Ennis.

The next fight was a pretty big letdown as many were expecting a war and we got a pretty boring 12 round fight. Jesus Ramos Jr and Erickson Lubin are both at the top of the 154 division so this fight was eagerly  awaited. The fight started slow but it started to heat up a bit in the middle. The next rounds though dropped off completely with it just being quite boring. Every round was competitive and early in the fight it was nip and tuck although Ramos would get success on the ropes. When Ramos stopped getting Lubin to the ropes later on the fight was just based on a few jabs from each fighter and was very hard to score especially in the early hours of the morning. I could see many people being divided on the scorecards because the output was so low which led to scoring it being increasingly difficult. Honestly it was very disappointing and one that I won’t watch again even to see what my score would be on rewatch.

The last fight for the night was the main event, 168 pounds undisputed Canelo vs 154 pounds undisputed Charlo. I knew this was going to be a mismatch but I was expecting Charlo to maybe win a round or two when Canelo started to fade but unfortunately Charlo just couldn’t get anything going. Canelo looked great here with no stamina issues and looked like the Canelo from a couple of years ago. Charlo came in looking too wary of the counters and even though the movement and defence was good from him, the offence just was none existent. I guess Charlo had some bursts of offence but he couldn’t string it together to win a single round. It reminded me of the Callum Smith fight but I feel like Jermell did try a bit more. Overall though after seeing the post fight interview Charlo just took the fight for the bag. He brushed it off like he didn’t just get dominated. Hopefully Canelo fights Benavidez next but I would be mad at a Crawford fight. That would be fun.