Abner Mares and Anselmo Moreno

2 Brilliant performances on the Showtime card last night from both the guys that were generally rated as the underdogs on the Brit Forum in their respective fights.

Firstly, Moreno completely schooled Darchinyan easily evading all of Vics attacks and landing fantastic counters at will. His right jab was perfect throughout and showed more variety than he had done in previous fights with some nice right hooks and left uppercuts. Certainly surprised me just how easy he dealt with Vic and I thought Vics style would make it tough for Moreno to work out. Even showed in stages that he could go to war with Vic and come out on top. Definitely his break-out performance! :good

Mares produced a great, thoughtful boxing performance against Agbeko and proved all the doubters wrong. Most impressive part of the fight for me was him taking away Agbekos jab completely and making his own the dominant punch of the entire fight. He was cut early on in the 2nd and showed great determination in the championship rounds when the cut was really at its worst to grab a clear decision. Agbeko cut a frustrated figure throughout as Mares moved intelligently and only got involved in trading when he knew he'd come on top and he was pretty efficient in selecting his shots. I had it 116-112 Mares (can also see 117-111), can't really make a case for it being any closer as I thought it was a pretty easy fight to score.

Would be good to hear some other views on this fight, is all forgiven with Mares now after his first showing with Agbeko? :hey It's easy to forget that he's still a young-pup in terms of fights at the very top level and his run of fights (Perez, Vic, Agbeko x 2) is amongst the very best at the moment.

Mares v Moreno is the obvious fight to make now, and a difficult one to predict. I think Mares will need to keep improving his jab and work some more on straight combinations but he can grind out a decision v Moreno IMO.

 

Any idea who this mando. is? :think

Can't begrudge him an easy defence I suppose, he's had a tough foray into world level with his recent list of opponents. Arce is a nice shout, wouldn't mind seeing that before Moreno :yep

 

Doubtful when it comes between a South African and his IBF title shot. :-(

Vusi Malinga, guy that got steamrolled by Hasegawa in a round not that long ago, I'm sure he's worked his way back up from that to really earn this shot. :roll:

Oh well, should provide a bit of a showcase for Mares and like I said earlier, you can't really begrudge him one gimme title defence.