Wasn't a tough fight. It was more like a sparring match for Crawford in which he had to figure out how to get the bunny to stop jumping around. The moment Madrimov started trying to exchange, he often times got popped with something that made him clinch to keep from going down. Even when he would have success with that over hand, Crawford walked through it with a 3 punch combination. Madrimov showcased flaws vs his previous opponents that even he knew Crawford would capitalize on thus, he didn't fight Crawford with the same energy and/or approach that he did vs the other fighters he faced. So I wouldn't call him overrated, per say, but more of still an unknown vs elite competition. He clearly wasn't as confident in his abilities vs Crawford. He didn't throw a single combination until round 7. That's weird.
1. Madrimov wasn't very competitive. He pretty much fought to keep from being stopped. 2. It's hard for me to know what Ortiz will bring. At least Madrimov accepted a fight vs Crawford. Ortiz avoided the match up twice. People forget Ortiz was Crawford's mandatory for 2 years. Both the WBO and Oscar are on record for saying that the Crawford fight was put on the table. Crawford was front row after the Mo Hooker fighter where Ortiz could have solidify his position on "wanting a title show vs Crawford". He was asked specifically about Crawford and he kept his response extremely "general". Needless to say, he never exercised his mandatory. After turning down the fight the 2nd time, the WBO replaced him with Shawn Porter as the mandatory and eventually mandated that fight to happen as Porter wasn't in any rush to get in the ring vs Crawford either. He actually turned down the first offer of $2.5M.
Remains to be seen. Was he just a rough style matchup for Crawford (the Ken Norton to his Muhammad Ali, so to speak) who would give him a tough night every single time no matter how many times they fought, or is he that damn good? we’ll start finding out. I look forward to watching. Even if Madrimov gave me a headache last time with his endless full body feinting.
He'd only had 11 pro fights going into the Crawford fight, had never fought any prime world class opponent before as a pro, was making a gigantic leap up in class from fringe world level to P4P elite level, and despite the claims he was the much bigger man Crawford was actually slightly heavier and had a huge reach advantage over him which I told you all would be the case before the fight. And yet despite all this he did enough to beat the top P4P #3 (#1 according to many) ranked fighter in the world in many people's eyes or at worst lost a razor-close 7-5 decision to them in their country with a home ref and three home judges Strange how Madrimov who was the champ not Crawford and Bohachuk who was the interim champ not Ortiz, both came away with Ls in fights which ''could've gone either way'' but yet damn near all of the time only go a certain way when fighters from their part of the world fight against the best from over there.
Never said I couldn't read it. Your comprehension needs to improve. When one says "huh" it's usually because they don't understand what they read...... So are you special needs and actually re-read what you wrote and thought it made sense?
You had Madrimov down by one round? Please explain how. I didn't have it nearly as close. Just interested in knowing what you saw of Madrimov for him to win more than maybe 2 or 3 rounds
Madrimov was landing a decent amount of straight punches and there were a number of rounds where he out landed Crawford. I've only watched the fight once and my score of 115-113 was the same as two of the official judges.
That's the funny thing about. Watching it live I remember after the they put up the punch stats after the 4th or 5th round claiming Madrimov had out landed Crawford and everyone at my fight party was like "WHAT THE ****...." And there were quite a bit of bitter Spence diehards there that questioned that because what we saw for the first 6 rounds, Madrimov never threw more than one punch at a time and Crawford counter with combinations damn near every single time. The rest of the fight was just feints. We couldn't figure out what they were scoring. In the later rounds, Madrimov started landing that straight often but it wasn't affecting Crawford's approach. Crawford was still throwing combinations in response. At no point in the fight, especially after rewatching the fight a few times after that weekend was Madrimov ever in control of the action. And he even got hurt multiple times. Hell in the 11th, 2 separate times he clinched to keep from being dropped. I honest can't find more than 3 rounds to even argue Madrimov winning. But hey....it doesn't matter, a win is a win.
There's a lot of butthurt copium occurring on this thread, and I don't come offering salve, I'm here to rip the scab off. But I'm not going to waste my breath on the last post of page 2 which no one will read. So Next...