i loved that fight, 2 highly skilled JMW having a chess match. i really thought a draw would had been the right call. but charlo being the bigger name got a couple close rounds which gave him the match. they were sparring partners for years, trained together so they knew so much about each other, that made it even more difficult to separate one for the win. vanes is so much better than i thought. i was obviously going off what people on this forum said about him. charlo (both) and vanes are legit man
It was a typical Vanes fight. He stood too far away. He had to reach really far to try to land. He didn't throw a lot of punches, and he missed badly most of time. You got the sense he was the stronger guy and he should've coasted to a win if he let his hands go, but he just didn't land that much. I think, at the end, he landed 79 punches. If you can only land seven or eight punches a round, you're going to lose most fights. Charlo, who I've never been impressed by, simply landed a couple more punches ... and when they landed they caught Vanes flush in the face. They were easy to see. It was like an amateur fight. The guy who landed more of the flush head punches won. But there was nothing memorable about it - sort of like both boxers. I don't think either will ever win one of the major belts. They're both lacking something.
Didn't keep the score but I know I had Vanes edging it by 1 or 2 rounds. His boxing ability actually surprised me, he's much better than I thought technically.
I remember seeing Vanes box in the Olympics against the excellent Cuban Aragon (2 x world amateur champion, Olympic runner up). He impressed me in that one even though he lost. He was just a baby back then but he gave the much more experienced and older Aragon a really stiff tussle.
If this was a newspaper deciscion and this forum the journalists looks like Vanes would nick it. I didn't see the fight hope to soon.
close fight, round 1 was close. round 1 martirosyan 10-9 round 2 martirosyan 10-9 round 3 charlo 10-9 round 4 charlo 10-9 round 5 charlo 10-9 round 6 charlo 10-9 round 7 charlo 10-9 round 8 martirosyan 10-9 round 9 martirosyan 10-9 round 10 martirosyan 10-9 95-95 draw