By Michael Collins: In disappointingly dull fight ESPN2 Friday Night Fights card filled with mismatches, junior middleweight contender Carlos Molina (20-5-2, 6 KO’s) completely dominated a gun shy Damian Frias (19-5-1, 10 KO’s) in a 10 round unanimous decision victory on Friday night at the Buffalo Run Casino, Miami, Oklahoma. The final judges’ scores were 100-90, 100-90 and 100-90. I still don’t see the point of this fight being made, because it had mismatch written all over it the moment it was made.
Molina, #6 IBF, #8 WBC, spent most of the fight landing hard body shots and combinations and getting little in the way of shots thrown back at him. Frias had decent power, but he really didn’t start letting his hands go in any real way until the 8th round of the fight when he was already hopelessly behind in the fight and badly in need of a knockout to win. Molina looked kind of tired from the 8th round on, just as he ran out of gas in the 9th and 10th rounds in his recent loss to James Kirkland March. Frias was able to land an occasional big shot in the last two rounds that would catch Molina while he was coming forward. However, Frias lacked the power to hurt Molina in the same way that Kirkland did.
Overall, it was a terrible fight and I don’t see how it helped Molina any. He can do better than this and it’s disappointing that he’s matched against weak opposition instead of guys that can help his career.
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In the co-main event, super middleweight contender Don George (23-2-1, 20 KO’s) wore down journeyman Dionisio Miranda (21-8-2, 18 KO’s), beating him by a 6th round TKO after Miranda was unable to come out for the 7th round. George, who was supposed to have been fighting #2 IBF Adonis Stevenson, didn’t look impressive until the 6th round when he began to really unload on Miranda with power shot after power shot.
It appeared that it took George that long to get really warmed up. All I can say to this is that George is awfully lucky that he wasn’t facing Stevenson, because he would have been all over George in the first few rounds and would have likely knocked him out. George is just too slow and predictable to beat a fighter like Stevenson. However, he’s going to have to because the two fighters will be facing of in October in an IBF super middleweight eliminator bout to pick the winner for the title fight against IBF super middleweight champion Carl Froch.
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In other action on the card:
Vilier Quinonez UD 4 Eddie Tigs