Tony Thompson (38-4, 16 KO’s) may have finished off the disappointing pro career of Cuban Odlanier Solis (20-2, 13 KO’s) tonight in beating him by a 12 round split decision in Tekirdag, Turkey. Solis was badly outworked in all 12 rounds of the fight. One judge had Solis winning by the score 116-112, but that a laughable score because Solis didn’t deserve to win one round.The other two judges scored it 115-114, 115-113 for Thompson. Even those scores were way of touch with what actually happened in the ring.
Thompson was throwing most of the shots while Solis just covered up and took them. At best, Solis landed 8-10 punches per round, and that was during his best rounds. Thompson was nailing him with everything but the kitchen sink. Solis held gloves up in front of his face to block a lot of the shots, but there were so many punches thrown by Thompson that tons of them go through Solis’ gloves to connect with his face.
This was a fight with open scoring, and incredibly all three judges had Solis ahead after four rounds by the scores: 39-37, 40-36 and 39-37. After 8 rounds, Thompson had taken the lead with the scores 77-75, 77-75 for Thompson, and 78-74 for Solis.
Then scoring helped Thompson in this case because it made him fight harder and throw many more punches. Solis, a fighter who is very economical with his punches, was unable to keep up with the high work rate for Thompson. Solis tried to rally in the last three rounds, but his short height and reach had him hitting mostly air with his shots even when backing Thompson up. Solis looked like an overweight cruiserweight fighting a big heavyweight, and his lack of size and work rate hurt his chances of winning.
With this win, Thompson picks up the vacant WBC International heavyweight title.
As for Solis, he might want to think seriously about retirement. There’s probably nowhere for Solis to go in the division unless he’s comfortable with being a gatekeeper type fighter.
