Michael Eifert (12-1, 4 KOs) used his volume punching & straight one-two combos to defeat 40-year-old former WBC 175-lb champion Jean Pascal (36-7-1, 20 KOs) by a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision on Thursday night in an IBF light heavyweight title eliminator to determine a mandatory for IBF/WBC/WBO champion Artur Beterbiev at the Place Bell, Laval, Quebec, Canada.
The scores:
Pascal had no power on his looping shots and looked tired from the early rounds. Still, Jean made a late charge in the last two rounds, taking the fight to the younger 25-year-old German Eifert and having him on the run, looking badly fatigued.
To his credit, Eifert would repeatedly stop and take the fight to the weary Pascal, hammering him with sustained combinations. If not for Eifert’s lack of punching power, he likely would have knocked Pascal out by the midpoint of the fight because he was exhausted and there to be stopped.
Some of the best shots that Eifert landed in the fight were rabbit punches, which seemed to have a negative impact on Pascal, as he looked groggy after taking these well-placed punches.
Eifert’s punches to the back of Pascal’s head on more than a few occasions looked pretty blatant.
In the tenth round, the referee gave Eifert a hard warning after he wrapped Pascal in a headlock and nailed him with his free hand.
Going into the fight, the little-known five-year pro Eifert was viewed as the underdog against the well-seasoned 40-year-old Pascal, who hadn’t lost a fight since his bout against Dmitry Bivol in 2018.
Eifert surprisingly showed boxing skills that we’d seen from other German fighters in the past, like Felix Sturm, Jurgen Braehmer, and Arthur Abraham. He showed excellent skills for a fighter with no hoopla about his career, and he did an admirable job beating past his best Pascal, where others like Marcus Browne, Badou Jack, and Meng Fanlong had recently failed.
The areas of criticism that one could level at Eifert were the way he faded in the championship rounds and the lack of power. Eifert got hit with many of Pascal’s looping shots, but he showed an excellent chin.
Eifert was also hit with many hard body shots from the Haitian-born Pascal, but he took those without showing signs of being hurt.
With the win, Eifert is now the IBF mandatory for IBF/WBA/WBO light heavyweight champion Beterbiev (19-0, 19 KOs). That’ll be a tougher fight for Eifert to try and win because Beterbiev has huge power, and the shots that Pascal was landing tonight could turn into knockout blows with him throwing the same ones.
In the undercard results, light welterweight Mathieu Germain (22-2-1, 9 KOs) defeated Steven Wilcox (24-4-1, 7 KOs) by a 10 round unanimous decision. The judges scored it 96-94, 97-93, and 97-93.
Female light welterweight Karla Ramos Zamora (10-9-1, 2 KOs) stopped Jessica Camara (10-4, 2 KOs) in the fourth round. Zamora unloaded a flurry of shots on the hurt Camara in the fourth round to get the stoppage. The bout was halted at 1:46 of the fourth.
Light heavyweight prospect Joe Ward (9-1, 5 KOs) destroyed Mario Andrade Rodriguez (7-1, 4 KOs) by a first round knockout. Ward knocked Rodriguez down with a nice left to the head. After he got back to his feet, he unloaded on him to get the knockout.
