RingSide Report

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Boxing Weekend Recap

By Joshua “City” Brewer

Hello boxing fans. Another week in the books and and plenty more action to come on the boxing front in the coming months.

The highlight of the weekend was no doubt the Manny “Pacman” Pacquiao, 59-7-2, 38 KO’s Vs Jeff “The Hornet” Horn, 17-0-1, 11 KO’s. These two fighters fought in front of a raucous crowd of supporters of each fighter in Horn’s hometown of Brisbane, Australia. The fight was pretty good considering that many didn’t give Horn much of a chance to last with Pacquiao. Horn was the bigger man and it showed as he was able to use his size to smother and lean on Pacquiao throughout the fight. Pacquiao though, was still levels above even at his advanced age. Pacquiao was able to utilize his movement to score and make Horn miss a ton of punches. Horn ended up landing only 15% of his punches while Pacquiao landed 32%.

It is boxing so the fight would be marred with controversy as judges saw it as a unanimous decision victory for Horn. Not the robbery of the century, but it was a fight in which Horn won no more than four rounds in my eyes. This fight was on ESPN so there were a lot of casual fans who tuned in. There has been fallout with the decision as well as calls for the judges to be suspended. It’ll be interesting to see how the next few weeks play out and what’s next for both Pacquiao and Horn.

There was another controversial ending to the main event of the Premier Boxing Champions (PBC) card from this past Friday. Robert Easter, JR., 20-0, 14 KO’s defeated Denis Shafikov, 38-3-1, in their 135 pound International Boxing Federation (IBF) title fight. It was a well paced fight that saw back and forth action from each fighter. Shafikov was able to win the exchanges in close while Easter, JR., found success on the outside when he wasn’t goaded into Shafikov’s inside territory. There were several rounds that could have gone either way depending on what you were looking for. I had it as a 114-114 draw but a close win either way wouldn’t have been extreme. Unfortunately, two judges had Easter, JR., winning every round which is beyond incompetence. Shafikov deserved a better showing from the judges and it’s become an issue all too prevalent.

Also on the card, Julian “J-Rock” WIlliams, 23-1-1, 15 KO’s, was back in action as he defeated Joshua Conley, 14-2-1, 9 KO’s, via technical knockout. It was a good comeback win for Williams who had been out since his December loss to Jermall Charlo. There are several options at 154, including Charlo’s brother Jermell should he want a form of family revenge.

On Tuesday, Miguel Cruz, 16-0, 11 KO’s, defeated Alex Martin, 13-2, 5 KO’s, via unanimous decision in a rematch to his win in January. Cruz dropped Martin twice in the fight and will now look to keep thing on the upswing as he progresses.

Boxing has its ups and down and bad judging definitely doesn’t help the cause. 2017 has been a very good year for boxing if you look past the politics. There are echoes of boxing’s downfall on a yearly basis. Boxing will move past the latest issues as it always does. That said, it’s time that each of the sanctioning bodies to put their best efforts into full effect. The fighters deserve better. The fans deserve better. Boxing deserves better.

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