Cosmopolitan Triple Header December 13, 2014 Las Vegas, Chelsea Ballroom, LVNV Promoters: Top Rank and Golden Boy Productions Fight Card Bradley vs. Sanchez, Korobov vs. Lee, and Herrera vs Benavides.
We preface this recap with an observation about how boxing skill is judged. There are the artists of movement and the finely-thrown punch. Then there is everyone else…the bulls, the brawlers and those who think the guy with the least blood on them at the end of twelve must be the winner. Judges can judge technique and count the accumulation of blows. But how are you to judge punishment round by round? By signs of obvious injury, By apparent fatigue? And how will you reset your assumptions if all of a sudden one fighter springs back to life in the 10th?
As we have stated previously, the sport is drifting towards brawling instead of boxing. Blame the public for their preference for UFC-style free-form melee instead of the well-executed combination. Those with small minds are demanding an equally somnambulant sport for Saturday nights at the bar. Two out of three of the fights reviewed here suffered from these lower expectations.
In the first contest, Mauricio Herrera was defending his interim junior welterweight title against Jose Benavidez, Jr. Herrera was the aggressive bull throughout whose battery slowly ran down in the later rounds. Benavidez was the technician who searched for opportunities to land punches and accepted the body blows between offensive flurries. The judges scored the fight 117-111, 116-112, 116-112 in favor of Benavidez based on his technique. The crowd favored Herrera because he, in their minds, laid the beating on Benavidez. The disappointed were not shy about shouting their opinion of the judge’s decision.
The jewel of the night was clearly the bout between Andy Lee and Matt Korobov for the vacant WBO World Middleweight title. After 24 straight wins, Korobov’s style was well-established. A wise opponent crafts his strategy to take advantage of those set patterns…and Lee’s trainer, Adam Booth, did exactly that.
Lee bided his time through the first five rounds until Korobov started to lose some of his speed and endurance. Lee’s side would give away some points early in order to have a shot at the win. Lee’s lighting right hook caught Korobov off guard in the sixth and gave the Russian a set of rubber legs. Shortly thereafter it was clear that Korobov could not continue at the fight was called a TKO.
From this first professional bout in 2006 to a heartbreaking loss to Julio Cesar Chavez, Jr. in 2012, Lee had been trained by the legendary Emanuel Steward. Following Steward’s death due to cancer late that year, he began training with Adam Booth. Lee credits Booth for making him the fighter he is today, but dedicated this win to Steward in memory of all he had done for him.
Some eight years after entering the sport, Lee offered that this was his “all-in” match. He would either be victorious or would retire. Now that he holds a belt, his dream is to defend it on Irish soil. And lastly, a factoid: With this win, Lee is the first Irish boxer to win a world title on US soil since 1934.
The main event of Timothy Bradley versus Diego Chavez echoed the problems of the first bout. Bradley played the role of skilled technician. Chavez was the hard charger…walking down his opponent until he could land his complement of blows. Early close quarters and head contact initiated a swelling in Bradley’s left eye which eventually closed by the 12th round…giving him the appearance that he had received the worst of the night’s damage. But Bradley gave no ground. When Chavez landed a punch, Bradley came right back. Where Bradley won round on style points early, he is slowly giving them away in the late rounds while protecting his eye. So who won? The judges scored the fight 116-112, 113-115 and 114-114. One went for the technical, one went for damage and the last one threw up her hands. Result: A Draw.
