Ryōta Murata vs. Emanuele Felice Blandamura & Daigo Higa vs. Cristofer Rosales González RBR

Ahh. Forgot he has a young son - about 1yr older than mine, actually.

 

Yeah, even Murata was grinning, like "A for effort, James.."

 

I was about to ask how Blandamura was currently the sixth rated middleweight in the world by the WBC, and then a) glanced at his record to refresh myself, and Signani & Goddi are decent enough scalps at Euro/fringe world level, and b) this is the same division where an org (WBO) has current Anthony Mundine top 15, while another (WBC) has Roberto Garcia within ten (#9)...so yeah, rankings are screwy.

 

Blandamura is a more than 4x longer-odds underdog than Rosales was.

 

Round 1

Blandamura is trotting around the carousel, speeding to his right, dusting the guard of Murata with flurries. Stiff jabs by Murata, getting his bearings and having a look at Blandamura, feeling him out, settling into honing in his aim. Not much landed clean for either. Blandamura giving a very wide berth, only daring single "power shots" in the form of a diving harpoon right on the body and then quickly scrambling to retreat. Murata just marching him down slowly, inexorably, like a Terminator, getting the engines revved up, jabbing at the head between the gloves when he can.

10-9 Murata

 

He's talking so much ****.

"WYSIWYG, in the first there you saw Murata is one-dimensional. Sure, a fan-pleasing one dimension, but still.."

I hate that he's commentating this.