Murat Gassiev Stops Yunier Dorticos in the 12th Round and Advances to the Final!
By Rich “Lite It Up” Lopez
Last week we witnessed a good scrap in the semifinal fight between Oleksandr Usyk and Mairis Briedis. Usyk won the fight by majority decision and advanced to the finals of the WBSS. He would meet the winner between Murat Gassiev Vs Yunier Dorticos which took place on Saturday. Murat “Iron” Gassiev 25-0, 18 KO’s of Vladikavkaz, Russia is the current IBF World Cruiserweight champion and is a skillful counter puncher with power. He is also trained by the popular Abel Sanchez. Gassiev won the title in 2016 against Denis Lebedev of Russia by split decision.
He earned his shot in the semifinals with a knockout victory over “El Diablo” Krzysztof Woldarczyk in three rounds. The other semifinalist, Yunier “KO Doctor” Dorticos 22-0, 21 KO’s of Havana, Cuba won the WBA World Cruiserweight title in 2016 against Youri Kaenga by 10th round stoppage. He advanced to the semifinals with a crushing 2nd round stoppage of Russia’s Dmitry Kudryashov. So the stage was set for these two power punchers to meet in Saturday’s semifinal fight.
As the fight started, Dorticos wasted no time and came out charging at Gassiev. Dorticos was measuring Gassiev with his longer reach and trying to land his right hand. Gassiev staying cool and collective kept a high guard. Dorticos continued the pressure in round 2, but Gassiev started to open up with some good counter punches and landed some good body punches as well. Round 3 was more of the same and you got the feeling that Gassiev was taking his time and trying to tire out the hard punching Cuban. Both men opened up in the 4th round with good exchanges.
Gassiev landed the more effective blows with his left hook but Dorticos took it. After some good pressure from Dorticos, Gassiev got off with some good combinations at the end of the 5th round which backed up Dorticos. In the early rounds Dorticos was always the aggressor, though sometimes it wasn’t always effective. Round 6 was the turning point of the fight and Dorticos seemed to be getting tired. Gassiev was starting to push back Dorticos. Dorticos was losing confidence and Gassiev was getting more comfortable in the inside picking his shots in round 7. Round 8 was a slower round, but Gassiev landed some good left uppercuts in the inside.
The Russian was now having his way landing good body shots and then working upstairs with left hooks. This continued in rounds 9 and 10. Dorticos was taking hard shots but was showing a good chin as Gassiev is a hard puncher. Towards the end of round 10, Gassiev landed a nice left uppercut followed by a left hook which stunned Dorticos but the Cuban was always firing back. In the 11th round, Gassiev landed a right hand followed by a left uppercut and then a right hook. This stunned Dorticos and for the 1st time he was in bad shape. He grabbed on to Gassiev and held onto him as the round ended. In the final round, Gassiev landed a left hook which put Dorticos on his back, but the Cuban was tough as nails and got up. Gassiev landed a series of left hooks and dropped Dorticos once again for the 2nd time. With about 20 seconds left in the fight, Gassiev closed the show with a flurry and landed a right hand on the top of Dorticos head, which made Dorticos fall halfway outside the ropes. Referee Eddie Claudio stopped the fight at 2:52 of the 12th round. What a great finish to a spectacular fight.
At the time of the stoppage, Gassiev led on all three scorecards. This now sets up a super fight between the number one cruiserweight Oleksandr Usyk Vs the number two cruiserweight Murat Gassiev for the final in the WBSS tournament. Not only will this fight determined who the best cruiserweight is but also all the major belts will be on the line (IBF, WBA, WBO, and WBC). How often do we see something like this? We should see more unifications in other weight divisions. Better yet, we should just see the best fight the best in all weight divisions. The Usyk Vs Gassiev fight is set for May 11, 2018 in Jedah, Saudi Arabia. I know Usyk will be the favorite in this fight, but I think Gassiev might pull it off based on his performance against Dorticos. It should be a great fight and it can go either way. Don’t miss it and once again we can hope this will be televised in the United States.
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