10.03.06 – By Bill Calogero: Ledyard, Ct.- In front of a near capacity crowd at the beautiful Foxwoods Resort & Casino, Willie “The Gladiator” Gibbs knocks out Lenord Pierre at 2:53 of the twelfth round to become the new USBA Middleweight Champion. Willie Gibbs and Lenord Pierre showed the close to 1400 fans why they were worthy of being the Main Event on an action packed fight card. From the opening bell until the KO, this was a non-stop action packed brawl.
In round one, Gibbs rocked Pierre with a solid two-punch combination to the head. Pierre survived the round by attacking Gibbs’ body with hard shots to his lower ribcage. In rounds two and three, Pierre continued to land solid body shots that kept Gibbs from doing much more than survive.
In round four, Gibbs was able to box a little more, using his jab and feet to control the tempo of the round. More importantly, Gibbs was able to keep the hard punching Pierre from landing anything serious.
Round five was an action packed round. Pierre was able to land many solid punches to the body and head of Willie Gibbs. Lenord keeps the fight close and starts to keep Gibbs in the corners and against the ropes.
Gibbs took control of round six with his jab and left hook. Pierre begins to look extremely tired and seems to plod through the motions, landing a solid punch here and there. Gibbs beats him to the punch and is able to use his jab to set up the left hook.
In round seven, Gibbs picks up where he left off in round six. He continues to set up his left hook with a crisp jab. Gibbs lands a solid left hook and opens up a gash over Pierre’s left eye. Pierre charges out in round eight, sensing that he is in trouble. As tired as he was, he kept punching, landing solid punches to both the body and head of Gibbs throughout the eighth, ninth and tenth rounds. All three rounds were action packed and Pierre seemed to be landing the harder punches and more often.
The eleventh round belonged to Gibbs. His superior boxing skills finally was getting to Pierre. Lenord was tired. His mouth was open and bleeding. Blood was streaming down his face into his eye. His trunks were now red. He started the fight with white trunks. Gibbs was landing a pawing jab, almost at will, on Pierre’s cut eye. He was catching Lenord with his left hook more often. He also began slipping in his uppercut and Pierre was finally running out of gas.
In the twelfth & final round, Willie continued to land punches in bunches and Pierre went down. He was up at the count of eight, but was still clearly in trouble. Gibbs jumped all over him and as the ten-second warning was given, Lenord Pierre went down and out. Willie “The Gladiator” Gibbs improves to 20-1 (16 KOs) while Lenord Pierre drops to 18-2-1 (15 KOs).
In the Co-Feature bout, Shamone Alvarez won a unanimous decision over Virgil McClendon in their 8-round welterweight bout. All three judges scored the bout 80-72 in favor of Alvarez who stays unbeaten at 14-0 (8 KOs), while McClendon drops to 20-7 (9 KOs).
In a very entertaining heavyweight bout, Larry White, donning a Burger King Crown, won a close decision to spoil the pro debut of Carlos Lovato. White improves his record to 2-0.
In other action, Devon Cormack stopped Angelo Acevedo with a second round TKO to improve to 1-1 in their scheduled 4-round fight. Wesley Hobbs won a unanimous 4-round decision over Joey Ortega in the most boring fight of the evening, while Phil McCants outclassed and out boxed Jose Medina in their Jr. Middleweight bout.