George Kambosos Jr. (21-2, 10 KOs) defeated Maxi Hughes (29-4-1, 26 KOs) by a highly controversial 12 round majority decision on Saturday night in an IBF lightweight title eliminator at the FireLake Arena in Shawnee, Oklahoma.
The scores were 114-114, 117-111, 115-113. Not surprisingly, the results of the fight were loudly booed by the fans at ringside.
Live boxing results of tonight’s card will be shown below.
– 2020 U.S. Olympic silver medalist Keyshawn Davis (9-0, 6 KOs) beat the game Francesco Patera (28-4, 10 KO) by a ten round unanimous decision in the chief support bout.
Keyshawn took a calculated approach to the fight, picking his spots to land his power shots, making the contest tougher than it was expected to be.
The scores:
In the eighth rround, Keyshawn knocked Patera down with a beautiful counter right hand. Patera fought back hard when he got back to his feet and made it out of the round.
In a real shock, Patera hurt Keyshawn in the ninth round after hitting hard to the body followed by several hard headshots. Keyshawn shelled and looked in bad shape as the round ended.
Keyshawn was on his bike in the tenth and coasted to ensure that he didn’t get clipped again by Patera, who was going all out, swinging for the fences.
– Welterweight Giovanni Santillan (31-0, 16 KOs) was forced to battle hard to defeat Eric Bone (27-7, 14 KOs) by a ten round unanimous decision in a fight much closer than ridiculously wide scores turned in by the judging crew. They scored it 97-92, 98-92, and 97-93, all for the 31-year-old Santillan.
The fight looked closer to a draw, if not a victory for the more experienced & powerful 34-year-old Bone, who landed the harder shots all night long night against Santillan.
In the second part of the fight, Bone faded, and Santillan was able to come on. Still, with how the judges scored it, they had Santillan dominating the entire fight, and that’s not what took place inside the ring.
Santillan is one of those types of fighters that has a failure-to-launch syndrome as he’s an 11-year pro who has been fighting exclusively lower-level opposition without ever stepping it up against world-class opposition. He’s now 31 years old and running out of time.
– Heavyweight prospect Jeremiah Milton (10-0, 7 KOs) defeated a badly overmatched 296-lb Willie Harvey (4-3-2, 3 KO) by a fourth round stoppage. Milton hurt Harvey with a huge right hand to the head, and him looking like a punching bag during the round.
Harvey’s right eye looked in bad shape as he went back to his corner, wincing in pain. Wisely, Harvey’s corner didn’t allow him to come out for the fifth.
– Middleweight Troy Isley (10-0, 4 KOs) outworked Antonio Todd (14-9, 8 KOs), winning an eight rround unanimous decision in a competitive fight. The judges scored it 79-73, 79-73, and 79-73.
– Heavyweight Hemi Ahio (21-1, 16 KOs) wore down and stopped Amron Sands (12-3, 9 KOs) in the sixth rround. Ahio hurt the tired 300-lb Sands with a right hand to the head and then teed off with seven consecutive unanswered punches to get a referee stoppage. The bout was halted at 2:12 of round six.
Sands was hurt in round two and close to being stopped after getting tagged by a huge right hand from Ahio. Both guys looked tired in rounds three through five, trading big shots.
Sands ran out of gas in the fifth, and he mostly covered up, allowing Ahio to land at will. All in all, it wasn’t a bad win for the 33-year-old Ahio. He’d been knocked out in the fourth rround last year by Faiga Opelu, a fighter that Joseph Parker recently stopped in the first round.
– In a surprising outcome, heavyweight Joseph Goodall (10-1-1, 9 KOs) stopped Stephen Shaw (18-2, 13 KOs) in the sixth round of a scheduled eight round fight.
Goodall put Shaw down twice in the sixth. Shaw’s corner stopped the fight because he was out on his feet and getting hammered by Goodall.
Shaw, 30, started off well, getting the best of Goodall in the early rounds. However, by the fifth round, Shaw looked exhausted and was getting hammered by Goodall, and doing very little to get out of the way of shots.
Preview: Tonight is George Kambosos Jr’s chance to begin again in a showcase fight against the capable Maxi Hughes in an IBF lightweight title eliminator at the Shawnee, Okla. Fans have been critical of the International Boxing Federation sanctioning the Kambosos-Hughes fight as a title eliminator at 135, considering Kambosos Jr is 0-2 in his last two contests.
Kambosos (20-2, 10 KOs) recently signed with Top Rank, and if he wins tonight, he’ll be in the pole position to fight for the IBF world title, possibly as early as December. Hughes was specifically chosen by Kambosos’ team, which means he was well-vetted and deemed not a huge threat.
Kambosos: Hughes is in for a world of pain
“I feel very motivated and hungry. We’re here in Oklahoma, Top Rank debut, headlining, ESPN, you can’t ask for more,” said Kambosos Jr to Boxing Social about his fight tonight against Hughes.
“This is a great moment in my career to show the world who ‘Ferocious’ Kambosos is. I know what Maxi Hughes is trying to bring, and I know what I’m going to bring. I know the better fighter I’ve become.
“Yes, I’ve been in the big fights, Teofimo, Devin Haney, I’ve seen it all. This is just as big because this is my opportunity to bounce back and showcase once again.
know that’s what fighters usually like to say that they had the best camp of their life, and they say it just for the sake of saying it.
“With every opportunity in the ring, I’m going to take it with both hands, and if he’s not fully prepared, it’s going to be a very bad night for him. He’s going to be in a world of pain.
“He’s a tough Englishmen, but when we talk about the guys he fought for his seven-fight win streak, we know who they are. They’re not massive names like the Lopezs and Devin Haneys, but he’s done what he’s had to do, and we respect that.
“He’s done enough to be in that pool of guys that we looked at, and we chose him, and we’ree excited for it,” said Kambosos Jr.
