By Rey Anthony: Key West, FL, USA – ESPN’s much awaited Friday night fights opened the year with a main event that did not live up to its hype. The scheduled 10-round super middleweight showdown televised on ESPN3 resulted in Dyah “Ali” Davis (21-2-1 9 KO) won a unanimous decision against Alfonso Lopez (22-2-0 17 KO) in front of a packed audience in Mallory square.
Both of them practiced different sports during their younger years. Dyah Davis played High School basketball and once dreamed of becoming an NBA Player. According to him, he decided to take up boxing at the age of 22 while watching a Klitschko fight. His father trained him for 8 months before his debut as a pro. He never fought an amateur fight in his career.
Alfonso Lopez was a former linebacker of a football team, before his debut fight in 2007.
The fight opened with both fighters not throwing any punch until the 2:00 mark when Lopez decided to unload a slow left jab. They both showed too much respect to each other and they also failed to land any clean shots. The round was so bland that ESPN ringside announcer Teddy Atlas said he was “tempted to give the first round to the referee” because of lack of action.
Davis, the son of ’76 Olympic gold medalist Howard Davis Jr., started throwing the more accurate punches in the beginning of round 2 while Lopez continued to keep his distance. The second round was the only round in the fight that anybody can fairly give to Lopez because it was all about Davis and his left hook from here. He continued to dominate convincingly until round 6.
Round 7 was starting to become a snooze fest that prompted again Teddy Atlas to say that the “audiences must get the points for staying throughout the fight.” Until around the 1:37 of the round when Davis got inside and connected a solid right upper cut that quickly wobbled Lopez and seemed to have woke up the audiences.
The last three rounds of the fight failed to deliver any action to the audiences. The ringside announcers started talking about NCAA football in the beginning of the 8th round. When you are watching a boxing match and the announcers started to talk about a different sport, then it is a clear sign that even they are getting bored. A solid left by Lopez at around the 1:00 mark seemed to have brought back everybody in the boxing match in front of them again.
The 9th round just showed two tired boxers trying to get through the night. There was a little bit of action during the 10th round when Davis landed a lot of his left hook through Lopez’ weak and seemingly tired defense. Davis’ eye however started to swell from Lopez’ jabs but Davis was still the more aggressive fighter and he closed the round with a flurry of punches that is enough to seal the round and the fight in his favor.