Man, I guess I need to rewatch this fight. For those of you, that had this fight a draw, what rounds did you give Barker. I thought Sergio won 8, 9 and 10 easy so you must have had Barker up 5-2 after 7?
You thought wrong. 1st - Martinez 2nd - Martinez 3rd - Barker 4th - Barker 5th - Barker 6th - Martinez 7th - Martinez 8th - Barker 9th - Barker 10th - Martinez
I think you are being a bit generous to Barker, but your card is much closer to the truth than these 9-1 idiots.
I say Martinez was already ahead on the scorecards by 2 rounds at the stoppage. Barker lost his gameplan. That stupid hands down routine of Sergio got old real quick..It wasn't cute like he thought it was.
I didn't score the fight round by round. But I thought Barker could've won 4 rounds on any reasonable scorecard. HBO is making it more of a stretch, but I do think while Martinez was struggling was finding the groove and definitely out-working Barker. A lot of Barker's clean counters and right hands were sort of pitty pat type stuff. He rarely tried to sit on his punches and land with force. Thus, if I rewatched the fight I'm sure I'd probably give Barker no more than 3 rounds. If I remember, I thought he won perhaps the 3rd, 5th, and 8th. I can't remember for sure. I thought Martinez fought well, and Barker did as well to his credit (Although not enough, as HBO pointed out quite often).
Exactly. I didn't score the fight but it was clearly quite evenly matched before Martinez closed the show. The sad thing is if the roles were reversed and Martinez was the one backing Barker up, outjabbing him, and landing the cleaner shots but generally just getting outworked, the HBO crew would have kept going on about how, "Barker's throwing plenty, but Martinez is just walking him down and picking him apart. The hottest fighter in boxing, Sergio Martinez, putting on a show!"