Fight fans ended up having quite a bit to moan and groan about last night in Newark, New Jersey. In the main event, the skilled but “boring” Shakur Stevenson failed to impress once again, this as he won wide in a dull and hard to watch fight with Artem Harutyunyan.
The unbeaten southpaw retained his WBC lightweight title via lopsided scores of 119-109, 118-110, and 116-112, and Shakur is now 22-0(10). Harutyunyan falls to 12-2(7) and the Armenian-born fighter has never been stopped.
But the big talking point last night, or perhaps the second big talking point last night, was how badly Stevenson is in need of an exciting performance. Fans were booing during last night’s fight, while more than a few headed to the exit door before the snoozer was over. Shakur has found himself pretty much apologising for a less than scintillating showing once again.
Stevenson now moves on, and he wants a big fight with a Vasiliy Lomachenko or a Tank Davis. But is there any big clamour from the fans for either of these two fights to get made? Being skilled is not enough these days, a fighter has to provide drama and excitement also.
The other big headache suffered by the fans came in the other world title fight that went down in Newark. O’Shaquie Foster looked to have done more than enough to have retained his WBC 130 pound belt against Robson Conceicao, this after 12 largely dominant rounds.
Yet to the shock and surprise of everyone, even the challenger himself it seemed, two of the three judges awarded the fight to Brazilian Conceicao.
Scores were 116-112 and 115-113 for the challenger, and 116-112 for the defending, now former champion. And straight away, plenty of people from the boxing world let their feelings known on this, the latest robbery to go down in the sport of boxing.
Foster had this to say:
“I thought it was a shutout. I thought it was an easy fight,” Foster, now 22-3(12) said. “I didn’t get touched but with a headbutt. I don’t know, man. They stole this fight from me.”
So many people firmly agree with Texan Foster:
“I think we just witnessed one of the biggest robberies ever. Ever, ever, ever in boxing history,” Regis Prograis wrote on social media. “[Foster] won every round.”
“Did we miss something with that Foster fight,” wrote Jamel Herring.
While one fan perhaps summed it up best with the following message:
“Genuinely despicable that the sport allows this to happen.”
So, here we are again, left fuming after a bad decision that came about due to either incompetence or something far worse. And again we are left with no idea what to do about it. We’ve seen too many bad decisions, robberies, to keep track of. The absolute least Foster is entitled to here is an immediate rematch with Conceicao, 19-2-1(9).
