Denis Shafikov Shocks the Boxing World with a 10th Round TKO of Jamel Herring – Boxing News
PBC on ESPN, Saturday, July 2, 2016 from the Santander Arena, Reading Pennsylvania.
The featured bout of the night was a lightweight contest posting Jamel Herring, 15-0, 8 KO’s against MUCH shorter Denis Shafikov, 36-2-1,19KO’s. That’s 5’10” vs. 5’5” respectively. Height aside, these two only differ by 1½”s in reach. Making the height advantage not as much a problem as one might think.
Jamel was the 2012 Olympic team captain and is a Marine vet that did 2 tours in Iraq and was the first active duty Marine to qualify for the U.S. Olympic team since 1992. This was a classic David and Goliath battle with Herring coming out in the first jabbing well and keeping the smaller Shafikov at a distance by moving side to side effectively. While Denis was trying his best to find his way inside to score, lunging at times to no avail. Despite the skilled use of the jab and 1-2 and movement, Denis finally managed to get inside to sore a few times but not enough to win the round. 10-9 Herring after 1.
Round 2 had Shafikov looking confident and coming forward, ducking and slipping the jab and producing some hard punches to the body and managing some jabs to the head as well. He’s cutting off the ring quite successfully as Herring dances away. At this point it looks as though Jamel has realized Shafikov is quite the opponent and is really dictating the fight so far. With 10 seconds left in the round. Denis gets a sweeping left to land which moves Herring back toward the ropes. Shafikov, then coming forward aggressively, tags Herring with a huge right knocking him to the ropes for a knock down and 8 count with 8 left. After 2 with the knock down, Shafikov is ahead 19-18.
For the next 21 min 36 seconds of boxing, Shafikov continued to dominate. Herring throwing with little to no authority essentially allowing Denis to come in and score at will.
Round after round, Shafikov is inflicting more damage than he’s taking as he comes in to make solid contact winning all remaining rounds on my card leaving Herring only to have won the first. In the corner after the 9th, Herrings corner emphatically exclaimed they would stop the fight if he failed to show them something more than what he’s done so far. After just :36, his corner did just that giving Denis Shaifkov the TKO 10 win and surprising most watching inside the Santander Arena.
Shafikov showed great ring generalship and aggressive solid punching along with a quality defense enough to avoid any real damage. I can see him moving up and onward to a title shot in the not so distant future.
In the opener for the evening, Patryk Szymanski, 15-0, 9 KO’s took on Wilky Campfort, 21-2,12 KO’s, in a 10 round super welterweight contest. Wilky, coming off a TKO 4 loss in a title shot against Jermall Charlo back in Nov. 2015 stated “A win will put me right back into where I was when I had my long winning streak. A win will put me back in the mix at 154-pounds.” and that he’s “not only fighting for himself but for all the people in Haiti and Florida that have been supporting him.” Patryk, still a young 23 year old, has fought opponents in their upper 30’s in his last 4 fights. Winning in the first or second round by TKO in 3 of those, as he should have against boxers with less than stellar or competitive records to his own.
Szymanski controlled the fight throughout utilizing his jab, sometimes tripling up with it and the 1-2 combination abundantly and well. He stayed busy and maintained good distance which suits his style and size and presented Campfort with a challenge he never was able to overcome. Campfort looked rather tentative in rounds one and two landing only 19 of 98. Only slightly easing and letting his hands go a bit more in round 3 while stepping forward with some quick but ineffective jabs and shots to the midsection of Szymanski. Wilky won his first round in the 5th again picking up his pace and actually shaking Patryk twice. After the bell some words were exchanged between the two and Szymanski, clearly with an attitude, shoves Campfort to the chagrin of the audience!
Campfort wins only one other round as I saw it and Szymanski dictates the pace of the fight and takes the UD win 98-92, 99-91, 99-91. But not after disappointing the crowd by shooting multiple low blows and hitting Wilky during a break in the final round. He then avoided engaging with Wilky for the final 20+ seconds of the round resulting in more groans of disappointment from the crowd as well. After the bell, Szymanski heads over to Wilky’s corner to congratulate the team, touches gloves with Campfort’s corner men and proceeds to give Wilky a face wash with the glove, again not sitting well with those in attendance and me as well!
Szymanski dominated the fight using is solid, traditional, fundamental skills yet needs to clean up his act and knock off the showboating and his questionable attitude, lack of respect and dirty shots to become a fan favorite worthy of boxing fans to pay out to watch in the future. Otherwise, I can’t see him getting the fights he needs to continue to move up.
Until next time. Keep your gloves up and elbows in!
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