By Rob Smith: Commonwealth super bantamweight champion Carl Frampton (15-0, 10 KO’s) may not have proved that he’s good enough to beat the likes of Nonito Donaire or Guillermo Rigondeaux tonight but he did prove that he’s good enough to defeat former IBF super bantamweight champion Steve Molitor (34-3, 12 KO’s) in a three-knockdown 6th round stoppage performance from Frampton at the Odyssey Arena, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom.
It was too easy for the short and powerful Frampton, who put the 32-year-old Molitor down once in the 3rd, 4th and 6th round before the referee decided to finally stop the mismatch at 2:21 of the round.
Molitor just couldn’t handle Frampton’s power and it wasn’t working for him tonight in trying to box the slugger. Molitor looked like he was in a pure survival move from the 3rd round.
Overall, it was a good win for Frampton, although I’m not all that excited about the fight because I don’t see Molitor as a world class fighter anymore. Molitor was easily beaten by Takalani Ndlovu last year and Molitor’s wins over Jason Booth and Sebastien Gauthier were highly controversial. I had Molitor losing his last three fights coming into tonight’s fight with Frampton. That said, I think Frampton did a good job against Molitor in proving that he doesn’t belong in the same ring with him, but I don’t see this victory as a sign that Frampton could hang with Donaire or Rigondeaux. Indeed, I think he’d get dominated by both guys and probably knocked out unless he played it safe. Frampton is young enough at 25 to wait both of those guys out to eventually grab a world title, but that’s not going to happen anyone soon.
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Light welterweight Paul McCloskey won a 12 round unanimous decision over Manuel Perez (18-8-1, 4 KO’s). The judges scored it 118-110, 118-110 and 118-112, for McCloskey. It wasn’t impressive stuff for McCloskey, but he showed that he’s still good enough to beat light punchers like Perez. McCloskey fought well in the first half of fight, but then faded in the second half. Luckily for him, Perez didn’t have any power to blast him out the way that DeMarcus Corley did in his last fight.