Tyson Fury (29-0-1, 20 KOs) suffered a bad cut in the third round and was forced to battle hard to win a 12 round unanimous decision over Otto Wallin (20-1, 13 KOs) on ESPN+ on Saturday night at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Wallin dominated the first six rounds, and came back to win the 12th after badly hurting Fury. At the end, the fight looked to be even. Neither guy did enough to win. It looked like a draw in the eyes of a lot of boxing fans. The judges scored it for Fury by 116-112, 117-111, 118-110.
Bad set of scores by the judges
Wallin fought well enough to win 5 of the first 6 rounds, and then he clearly took the 12th. The judges that worked the fight tonight saw it differently. Scoring it 117-111 and 118-110 for Fury is more than a little disturbing, because those scores suggest that the fight was a one-sided affair for Fury, and that clearly wasn’t the case.
Fury allowed to fight with a huge amount of vaseline on right eye
Wallin landed a lancing left to to the right eye of Fury in the third that opened up a huge gash. The cut was bad enough for the fight to be stopped, but it was allowed to continue. from the 4th round on, Fury fought with a huge amount of vaseline on his cut eye. A lot of referees wouldn’t have allowed Fury to fight with a huge mountain of vaseline on his eye.
This was easily the worst performance for Fury since his first fight against John McDermott. Fury looked weak and lethargic. He couldn’t get out of the way of the southpaw Wallin’s left hands, and he was getting hit with his jabs all night. What saved Fury was Wallin fading after the 6th. He was exhausted from the 7th to the 11th, and did little until coming to life in the 12th.
Tyson Fury looked old tonight
Fury fought like a guy much older than 31. It’s possible that the hard knockdown Fury suffered in the 12th round by WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder last December took something out of him. We didn’t get a chance to see how depleted Fury was in his last fight against Tom Schwarz, because he was matched against such a poor opponent.
Wallin isn’t great, but he had enough talent to expose Fury. If Fury can’t fight better than this in his rematch with Wilder on February 22, he’s going to get knocked into oblivion. Wilder would go right hand happy against Fury if he looks as depleted against him as he did tonight.
Emanuel Navarrete beats Juan Miguel Elorde
WBO super bantamweight champion Emanuel Navarrete (29-1, 25 KOs) made easy work of #2 WBO Juan Miguel Elorde (28-2, 15 KOs) in stopping him in the 4th round in the co-feature bout. Navarrete knocked Elorde down in the 3rd round. Navarrete finished Elorde off in the 4th round with some big shots that led to referee Russell More stepping in to stop the slaughter.
Emanuel Navarrete stole the show tonight with his stoppage win over Elorde. It wasn’t hard for Navarrete to take the limelight away from Fury’s performance in the main event. Fury stunk out the joint with the way he struggled to beat Wallin.
“I’m happy because I think I put on a great performance,” said Navarrete. “Fortunately, my opponent is OK, and I came out here to put on a show. I hope the fans enjoyed it on my very first Las Vegas show on Mexican Independence Day Weekend. ‘Vaquero’ Navarrete is here to stay. The most important thing here was that it was a good performance for me. I think the referee did the right thing. He’s going to go home to his family, and everything is going to be OK.”
Navarrete fought just last month in stopping Francisco De Vaca in the 3rd round on August 17. He wants another quick turnaround, and it’s possible that Top Rank will put him on the Terence Crawford vs. Egidijus Kavaliauskas card on December 14th. Navarrete fighting frequently is fine, but Top Rank needs to mix in some quality in terms of opposition, because it’s not going to be good for the boxing public if they keep seeing mismatches. A unification fight for Navarrete would be nice, but it’s doubtful that any of the champions at 122 would want to fight in December. The way for Top Rank to find opposition for Navarrete would be if he were to move up to 126 or 130 to look for top fighters in those weight classes.
Jose Zepeda beats Jose Pedraza
The bigger and stronger Jose Zepeda (31-2, 25 KOs) defeated former two division world champion Jose Pedraza (26-3, 13 KOs) by 10 round unanimous decision. It was a good fight. Zepeda exposed Pedraza, 31, in showing that he lacks the punching power for him to succeed in this weight class. Zepeda boxed well, and showed the better punching pow.
The scores were 97-93, 97-3 and 97-93. There weren’t major world titles on the line unfortunately. Zepeda was beaten earlier this year by WBC light welterweight champion Jose Ramirez in a close fight. Zepeda was landing well with hard shots when Pedraza was trying to mix it up.
Overall, it was a good win for Zepeda, and it keeps his world title hopes alive. Zepeda has a lot of talent, but he’s not on the same level as the elite level light welterweights like Regis Prograis and Josh Taylor.
Carlos Cuadras beats Jose Maria Cardenas
Former WBC 115 pound champion Carlos Cuadras (39-3-1, 27 KOs) won a close 10 round majority decision over the towering 5’9″ Jose Maria Cardenas (17-5, 14 KOs). The scores were 96-94, 96-94 for Cuadras, and 95-95. The 5’4″ Cuadras had to work hard to get in range to land his shots against the towering Cardenas. Cuadras, 31, did a good job of working his way to the inside to land nice shots.
The combination punching from Cuadras was working for him tonight. He would charge forward, nail Cardenas with two to four punches thrown in rapid fire fashion, and then he would retreat to get out of harm’s way. Although Cuadras was beaten not too long ago by Juan Francisco Estrada and McWilliams Arroyo in 2017 and 2018 respectively, hes turned things around with his career.
Other scores on the card:
Isaac Lowe UD 8 Ruben Garcia Hernandez
Gabriel Flores Jr. UD 6 Miguel Angel Aispuro
Iskander Kharsan TKO 5 Isidro Ochoa
