Nobuhiro Ishida vs. Rigoberto Alvarez: WBA 154 title RBR

Round 10

Ishida calmly jabs and lets Alvarez dig his own grave with huge left hands that lift him off his own feet and leave him hunched forward and open to being peppered with counters that he can't even see. Alvarez misses a couple of right jabs wide (maybe his vision is obstructed by swelling?) - then has a straight left countered by a mirror-image but more technically correct right by Ishida flush on his nose. Alvarez edges in close and grabs Ishida behind the neck, trying to rough him on the inside but doesn't have the gas to get much work in before the break. Ishida recognizes this and simply falls into his clutches like a ragdoll, waiting to separate and jab him in the face some more.

10-9 and 96-93 Ishida

 

Round 11

Alvarez is dog tired but punching his guts out. Jabs and uppercuts fly at Ishida from the same predictable angles and at the same speed but somehow it seems dramatic as Alvarez just doesn't let up and the Mexican faithful shout encouragement. Ishida is turtling up in between jabs and right crosses to the forehead of Alvarez, who can barely hold himself up straight between volleys of punching and is mouth-breathing a bit.

10-9 Ishida but an Alvarez sympathizer might find enough in the round to award it to him on sheer effort. It isn't like Ishida was spectacular with his jabbing and gophering.

 

Round 12

Alvarez wants it...he just can't quite seize it. He leads for the first minute and finds his every assault tip-toed around, then backs off and with a deflated expression allows Ishida a turn at coming forward with the 1-2 in an ongoing loop. Alvarez decides to get back in it with some enormous uppercuts out of nowhere and backs Ishida up, grazing him. A cut over the eye of Alvarez is checked and he is cleared to go on for the last forty seconds, which is a forced slugfest with which Ishida is clearly very uncomfortable. Alvarez doesn't get the knockout or even a knockdown but he goes get the crowd on its feet and cheering.

What the hell, I'll give that last one to Alvarez - academic as it is.

115-112 Ishida

Let's see how it plays out in Nayarit...

 

Holy ****. Robbery.

 

It's not quite like that - more of a Miguel Angel-Jose Miguel thing.

 

Alvarez is all heart, and deserved a lot of props for trying to pull out the finish until the bitter end despite clearly being out of wind, out of ideas, and short on confidence. What he did not deserve was the WBA light middleweight championship (Cotto is apparently the "super" champion, in case you were confused about that - not that the WBA gets confusing with its shenanigans :!

 

Bonus!

We get to see the entire Cazares-Rossel fight from earlier tonight (originally aired on Mexico Televisa).

 

You're probably right about the championship frames counting against Ishida on the official cards. I missed the scores (and don't speak ultra-fast Spanish anyway :yep).

I don't know...my card had Ishida winning by three points and at least one of those rounds for Alvarez was pretty flexible. It seemed like a pretty clear Ishida win to me.