Diaz was an undefeated guy with an elite amateur background. It was silly to think Russell would just walk through him
Ugh, something about it just seems incredibly tacky and rubs my OCD twenty different flavors of the wrong as wrong can be way; I've always vastly preferred each geographically distinct card to be its own thread. I ****ing hate Showtime for doing this (and equally gets my goat when HBO does it, though it has been a long time since they did). Like, for people in Canada or Europe watching the card in Toronto, nothing about the Russell vs. Diaz card makes it part of the same event, you know? It shouldn't be the rest of the world's problem that some American TV network decided they had to do things in such an inconvenient, awkward way.
He should've continued what he did in the second. Also he probably should have tested fighting on the backfoot. He was obviously having success walking forward and going to the body, but when he wasn't throwing he should've tried to counter. His downfall was his inactivity walking forward. Did better than I thought. I always knew Jojo was good fundamentally but didn't expect his defense and accuracy to be that good.
Russell is open to body shots all night.. GRJ is an athletic beast but his defense is suspect. I'd still put GRJ as a favorite but LSC body work would give him fits.
GRJ probably the best Featherweight in the world right now. He did well facing a stylistically hard fight. It's always tricky handling a pressure fighter when you're a pure boxer.
There were some scoring shots in there outside of the shoe shining. And paired with Diaz' lower activity rate, you'd be hard pressed to find judges that will score those type of rounds for the guy with the low work rate.
I'll let people trickle in their final GRJ vs. JoJo thoughts first. First bell I'll temporarily close this one.
