Fight of the Week #3: Little Red Doubleheader (vs. Ayala and Chacon)

Round 9-10 Mikey looks strong again taking 9 and maybe 10? He looks so much better boxing and punching when not in the corner. Even in these 2 rounds he is letting Red work without expending energy. Mikey lands some solid shots especially at the end of 9. Danny remains composed and only had to make it 10 seconds with no further damage.

 

Round 11 a huge blunder.

Mikey gets dropped and takes a knee, Carlos Padilla waves it off...its all over! Lopez wins!!!


Or does he? Padilla talks to Ayala’s corner, the time keeper and an official and it is back on. The fight continues....this does not happen every day lol.

Ayala gets about a minute in the confusion to regain his senses. Danny comes back out...the round ends giving Ayala another minute to regroup.

This is some crazy stuff

 

Round 12 wow! 2 fatigued warriors slugging it out. Lopez takes over mid round but Ayala comes strong the last 30 or so with some clean shots....I thought it was Lopez but not sure now close rd and glad I am not scoring and/or that it would be rendered irrelevant if I was.

 

Well, to be fair - there were two to watch this week. And this week personally has been a *****.

Will start watching Lopez-Ayala tonight.

 

Round 13-15

Great fight. A lot of back and forth exchanges landed by both guys. Again to my eye test close rounds that Danny might be taking..but I am taking this in more than scoring.

Round 15 Danny applies the pressure hurting Mike but mike fights back...again Red gets him and this time it is really over!

Great fight

 

If your name is "Ayala", and you're from San Antonio, you have no choice but to be a boxer.

 

Lopez v Ayala

R1: Lopez
R2: Ayala (difficult to score - Lopez busier, Ayala with the more eye catching combos)
R3: Ayala (Ayala's strategy is to box off the ropes, confident that he is better defensively. Lopez still the busier but less certain of how to tackle Mike)
R4: Ayala (the pattern continues. Mostly punches landing on the arms from Lopez, excellent defense from Ayala and then short explosive bursts that means little Mikey edges the round)
R5: Ayala (Lopez needs to change up his attack; Ayala feels like he's controlling the exchanges, even on the back foot)
R6: Lopez (close but thought Lopez was more effective in this round, but maybe in comparison with the last few)
R7: Lopez - by 2 points (Lopez takes control amd turns the fight his way, bringing Ayala off the ropes and fighting in ring centre. Lopez landing harder and more frequently now. Then, all of a sudden, Ayala drops to one knee).
R8: Ayala (close - Lopez takes the first minute, Ayala taking punishment but Mike comes back hard - tremendous round)
R9: Lopez (close again - Lopez seems to be landing the more damaging shots, Ayala fights back hard though. Superb stuff)
R10: Lopez (Ayala starts well but is starting to tire now. The off the ropes strategy is not working like it was and Lopez is landing consistently. Clearer round for Lopez)
R11: Lopez by two points (The continual pressure from Lopez is starting to take its toll on Ayala and again Ayala drops to one knee from a relatively innocuous punch. Then chaos - Padilla looks like he is waving the fight off and Lopez's seconds enter the ring before Padilla calls it on again - and then the round is over)
R12: Lopez (Lopez dominating most of the round, using his jab to control the distance. Ayala landing more sporadically but having no discernible effect. Ayala comes on in the last minute but not enough to take the round)
R13: Lopez (close and Ayala fought back hard towards the end of the round but Lopez is doing more damage overall)
R14: Lopez (this is reminding me of Mancini-Kim, the bigger, stronger fighter is on top, but Ayala is doing just enough to keep it competitive)
R15: Lopez stops Ayala after working him over for the first minute or so of the round

 

Summary:
After 14 rounds, I had it in rounds 9-5 to Lopez but with two two-point rounds, the 7th and 11th because of the knockdowns. That made it 135-129 in Lopez's favour.

On the official scorecards, Lopez was up on two of them; 135-129, the same as my score, and 135-132 (too close when you factor in both knockdowns). Unbelievably, the third judge had it 131-134 to Ayala! That's hard to fathom.

Lopez looked like a big featherweight in there and Ayala looked more like a bantamweight. Ultimately the size difference and power difference was too much for Ayala to overcome but he showed great heart to last as long as he did.

The 11th round was as bizarre an end to a round as you could see. Padilla definitely waved it off and Ayala seemed to have accepted the decision but then Padilla changed his mind - odd, to put it mildly.

 

Not quite the same but:
http://boxrec.com/media/index.php/Carlos_Ortiz_vs._Sugar_Ramos_(1st_meeting)

Ortiz wins the fight...the WBC tries to order him back to the ring after 20 minutes.

He refuses they declare Ramos the victor and new WBC champ. 2days later they declare the title vacant. The WBA continues to recognize Ortiz as the champ.

Glad this fight avoided all that fallout

 

Padilla changed his mind after the timekeeper told him, rightly or wrongly, that Ayala was up at the count of 9. Padilla was counting 10! when the timekeeper was counting 9!. I don't know if the timekeeper could overrule the ref, but Padilla at least listened to him.

 

Ah, ok - that clears it up (sort of). Still an unusual situation. Ayala looked like he had accepted the fight was over, that was what was weird about it.

 

Scoring these fights has shown that when two fairly evenly matched fighters fight, unless one of them gets hurt, the rounds are going to be close most of the time. I probably score for the aggressive fighter most of the time if the round is close. Agree about Lopez defensively, he didn't look good. It seems like he would have done something to avoid that right hand, and in his mind, he probably did, but whatever he did didn't work. I've seen boxers who wouldn't make adjustments in a fight/spar, and if something wasn't working they'd keep doing it, just harder or faster...maybe Lopez was like that?

I don't disagree with you or PhillyPhan69 in how you scored it, Lopez came forward, but Chacon was hitting him almost at will.