Boxing News Boxing News
There were no suprises during the welterweight championship bout, Saturday night at The Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, Nevada. IBF Welterweight Champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. took no chances and cruised to a unanimous decision over WBC Welterweight Champion Carlos Baldomir. Two judges had Floyd pitching a 12 round shut out 120-108, while one judge gave the 4th and 10th rounds to Baldomir, scoring the bout 118-110.
The fight was really a display of Mayweather’s speed and world class defensive skills. He was simply too fast for the rugged Argentinian who maintained pressure throughout the fight, but rarely caught up to the elusive Mayweather. When Baldomir did trap Mayweather on the ropes, he had difficulty landing any effective punches before Mayweather spun away and took the fight back to the center of the ring.
Compubox punch statistics tell the story of the fight as Baldomir landed only 79 of 670 punches thrown for a 12% connect percentage.
Mayweather’s most effective counterpunching was done early in the fight, as Baldomir walked back to his corner at the end of round one with cuts on the bridge of his nose and outside his left eye. The small cuts were never a factor during the fight. Mayweather continued to wow his many ringside fans with sharp counterpunches over the first half of the fight, however his punch output seemed to slow considerably during the second half of the fight, supposedly the result of a hand injury sustained early in the bout.
Fight fans were left watching a frustrated Baldomir chase Mayweather around the ring. The paying fans who were expecting to see a boxing match and not a track meet, were disappointed enough to rain down a chorus of boos during the twelfth round.
Mayweather remains undefeated with the victory, bringing his record to 37-0(24KO’s), while Baldomir falls to 43-10-6(13KO’s).
There was some good action in the undercard bouts, also featured on the HBO PPV telecast.
In a minor upset, Mexico’s Orlando Salido captured the IBF Featherweight Title with a hard fought 12 round unanimous decision over champion Robert Guerrero. Guerrero came out strong and imposed his physical size and inside game to take the first round. The more experienced Salido quickly made adjustments and was able to create some distance and land enough flush shots to take the second round in the eye of 2 of the three judges. Salido had even more success in round 3 and landed many flush shots to incoming southpaw Guerrero. So effective was Salido against the aggresive champion, that Guerrero completely changed his gameplan from forward aggression and infighting to standing back and counterpunching in round 4. Salido generally outworked Guerrero for the remainder of the bout and was effective with a two fisted punching attack, punishing the champion to both the body and head.
With the victory, the newly crowned champion Salido improves to 28-9-2(19KO’s), while Guerrero falls to 19-2-1(12KO’s).
