Boxing News Boxing News
© Jim Everett / Saddo Boxing
Deandre Latimore “rocked the house” in an upset victory by scoring a seventh round technical knockout over Sechew Powell at the Hard Rock Café in Times Square, New York City on this week’s ESPN Wednesday Night Fights promoted in association with Warriors Boxing and Gotham Boxing.
Not that I want to get in the “too much information” category, but before the night of boxing began I was using the restroom and one of the St. Louis natives came in yelling “It’s gonna be an upset tonight, we didn’t come all the way from St. Louie to lose!” At this point I just smiled as I washed my hands and he continued, “You’re smilin’ but you wait and see its Latimore’s night!” I guess he knew what he was talking about.
The St. Louis native Latimore 19-1 (16) built up his record in just over two years, fighting seemingly lower level competition eleven times in 2006 and eight times in 2007, with the combined records of his opponents at 95-158-8.
From the opening bell it seemed Latimore was better than anticipated as he was able to trade with Powell from the beginning of the fight. Each fighter was able to land hard blows and made each round close.
Latimore began to get the better of the exchanges in the sixth round, landing several hard shots to which Powell responded by shaking his head as if he was not hurt and yelling “C’mon” to the challenger. In between the rounds, Powell’s trainer Buddy McGirt hollered, “Stop playing to the crowd, Sechew! You don’t need to be taking those shots.”
Powell came out for the seventh round continuing to exchange blows. Halfway through the round Latimore took control landing several unanswered blows and landing a big uppercut that put Powell on the ropes. The referee jumped in to stop the fight at 2:11 of the round after seeing Powell’s head snapped back from a few more unanswered shots.
Powell 23-2 (14) yelled in the ring “what happened?” and felt he was ok to continue as he walked around the ring in disbelief. His fight plan seemed to be to play possum and try to lure Latimore in and get careless however with the punches he absorbed his legs did appear to be unsteady.
All three judges had the fight scored 57-57 at the time of the stoppage and even the punch statistics were similar with Latimore landing 37% (155 of 419) and Powell landing 34% (158-464) total punches.
In the co-feature, New York fan-favorite Peter “Kid Chocolate” Quillin ran into a little bit of trouble but was still able to score a ten-round unanimous decision over Dionisio Miranda by scores of 97-93 and 97-92 twice.
Quillin 19-0 (14) dominated the first four rounds of the fight until Miranda increased his punch output in the fifth round putting him on the scorecards. Quillin took back control of the fight in the sixth round but than ran into a right and left uppercut in the seventh that hurt him. Miranda 19-2-2 (18) was able to landing sweeping rights that put Quillin on the ropes, snapping his head back. With his legs wobbling Quillin was not able to tie up Miranda and used head movement to try to avoid his punches to get through the round.
Although Quillin seemed to have his feet under him coming out for the eighth round he was cautious and used his jab from the outside. Taking the round to regroup did him well as he was able to again dominate the last two rounds of the fight.
In an un-televised bout Jorge Teron 21-0-1 (14) scored a third round KO against Lenny DeVictoria 11-12 (3) who he previously beat by a unanimous decision in 2006. Teron dominated the action through out the short fight, landing an onslaught of punches in the third round dropping DeVictoria with a left hook.
