35-year-old Zab Judah (42-8, 29 KO’s) gave it a good shot tonight but in the end he was beaten by WBA/WBC light welterweight champion Danny Garcia (26-0, 16 KO’s) in a 12 round unanimous decision loss at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. Judah was in command of the fight in the last three rounds of the fight, but unfortunately for him he ran out of time and ended losing. The scores were 115-112, 114-112, 116-111.
Garcia fought well in the first 8 rounds in using his right hand to do most of the damage. Judah did a good job of neutralizing Garcia’s left hook and jab. Garcia’s right hand proved to be enough for him to control the rounds and build up a big lead. However, the crowd seemed to motivate Judah to another level starting in the 9th round when he was able to land some really big shots that stopped Garcia in his tracks.
Judah continued to land the far bigger punches in rounds 10, 11 and 12 to dominate the rounds. Garcia kept firing back, but his punches weren’t nearly as significant as Judah’s.
After the fight, Garcia expressed interest in facing the winner of the Lucas Matthysse vs. Lamont Peterson fight. When asked who will win the Peterson-Matthysse fight, Garcia said “I think Peterson will win.” It’s unclear if Garcia really meant that or if it was a case of wishful thinking on his part. After all, there are a lot of boxing fans who believe that Garcia wants no part of fighting Matthysse.
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WBO middleweight champion Peter Quillin (29-0, 21 KO’s) defeated his hand-picked opponent #9 WBO Fernando Guerrero (25-2, 19 KO’s) in a predictable 7th round knockout. Guerrero dropped Guerrero down twice in the 7th round to get the stoppage at 1:30 of the round. The first knockdown came from a right uppercut to the head. Guerrero got back up but was dropped by another right hand to the head.
Quillin also knocked Guerrero down twice in the 3rd round. There was some action in the 5th and 6th round, but for the most part if was brutally one-sided.
The WBO doesn’t have much in the way of contenders for Quillin to face and he’ll likely hold onto his WBO title for a long time given the weak opposition he has to deal with. WBA champion Gennady Golovkin has been interested in fighting Quillin for a long time, but the interest hasn’t been matched by Quillin.
This mismatch was hardly deserving of being televised. Hopefully, Showtime will be a little particular about the fights that they show because it’s kind of off putting to see Quillin in mismatches against soft opposition like this.
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Former middleweight contender Daniel Jacobs (25-1, 22 KO’s) defeated journeyman Keenan Collins (15-8-3, 10 KOs) in a 4th round TKO in another mismatch on the card. Jacobs flurried on the outclassed Collins in the 4th round the referee jumped in to halt the fight at 2:06 of the round.
Jacobs pretty much treated Collins like a punching bag for the four rounds of the fight, and he looked like he could have ended the fight in the 1st round had he wanted to.
Golden Boy is going to need to start putting Jacobs in with better opposition than this because he’s not getting much fighting guys that aren’t good enough to really challenge him.
The first time around, Golden Boy had Jacobs in with nothing but soft opposition until throwing him in with Dmitriy Pirog and Jacobs looked like he was in shock with the huge step up in class and he ended up getting easily stopped. Now it looks like Golden Boy is doing the same thing as last time with Jacobs in padding his record.
Other boxing results:
Marcus Browne KO 2 Taneal Goyco
Zachary Ochoa pts 4 Calvin Smith
Miguel Cartagen pts 4 Angel Carvajal
D’Mitrius Ballard TKO 2 Marcus Clay
