Tevin Farmer (33-8-1, 8 KOs) blew his chance of defeating WBC interim lightweight champion William Zepeda (33-0, 27 KOs) by focusing on clinching instead of throwing shots and wound up losing a 12-round majority decision in their rematch at the Poliforum Benito Juárez in Cancún, Mexico.
Farmer fought well in the championship rounds when he abandoned his clinch-heavy style and began letting his hands go. In the twelfth, he appeared to drop Zepeda, but the referee didn’t make the call. Late in the round, the former IBF super featherweight champion Farmer had Zepeda briefly hurt but couldn’t finish him.
The scores
114-114
116-112 – Zepeda
115-13 – Zepeda
I had Zepeda winning 117-111. He dominated most of the rounds, with the exception of 6, 10, and 12. He had Tevin close to being stopped in rounds two and four when he was unloading body and headshots that had the 34-year-old doubled-over and looking like he needed to be saved by the referee. Many refs would have stopped the fight because Farmer wasn’t fighting back and was taking a vicious shellacking from Zepeda.
Clinching Tactics
Farmer did little more than land occasional potshots in rounds one through eight. He started fighting better in the championship rounds when Zepeda’s high punch output dropped off. Williams, 28, looked exhausted from all Farmer’s holding.
Zepeda was expending a lot of energy trying to pry himself from being held by the bigger, more muscular Farmer. That took something out of Zepeda because he didn’t have the same size or the wrestling ability that Tevin had going for him.
Being held by a bigger fighter takes a lot of energy out of the smaller guy, especially when he’s trying to break free from the octopus-like grip. You can argue that the referee should have taken points off from Farmer for his clinch-heavy approach to the fight because that was blatant cheating that he was doing. When clinching is a fighter’s main line of defense and they’re going overboard, as Farmer was, the referee is supposed to do his job by policing the activity. In this case, the referee did nothing, and Tevin used the tactic to neutralize Zepeda’s offense.
After the fight, Fsrmer sounded like a poor sport, playing the victim, talking about how he’s always robbed by the judges. He wasn’t robbed tonight nor was he in his first fight with Zepeda. He held too much in that fight too and got away with it just like tonight.
Zepeda’s Future
It’s time for Zepeda to wash his hands with his rivalry with Farmer and move on. He can’t devote his entire career giving this guy rematches. Even if they fight again, it’s going to be the same thing with Farmer clinching nonstop to survive. There’s no point in them fighting again. Let Farmer fight Andy Cruz and try that tactic against him.
