Spada fought well against Rubio

The full fight can be found easily on youtube.

I think Spada put on a spirited effort saturday night. Rubio did not really do anything for much of the fight, however he was comfortably ahead at the time of the stoppage.

The referee took 2 points from Spada for punching behind the ears during clinches. There may be the issue of Spada not knowing English nor Spanish and thus not understanding what he was being penalized for. The judges too, they were all of Mexican descent.

WBC and other alphabet organizations should appoint officials less blatantly favoring one part. :-(

Also, open scoring has badly altered the flow of this fight. I thought Spada was winning based on aggression alone, as Rubio had been sleepy and idle for most of the gig. This even considering the 2 points penalization. However it was Rubio who was comfortably ahead in the scores, by 8 points or so after the 8th round. atsch
Spada then opened up too much looking for the knock out, and got caught during an exchange of hooks in the 10th.:!: Would not have happened, had the scores not been known by then.

 

Summing up: imo Rubio stock goes down, Spada's goes up, and open scoring is bad for boxing, because it shows the visiting fighter that he will never win on points and he would be better suited to throw his fight plan out of the window and look for the KO. So he gets careless and hometown fighter scores an easy KO

 

NOw Martinez should fight Rubio in 90 days or so, otherwise he will have to relinquish his WBC middleweight title to the interim champion Rubio

 

I should perhaps change the title of this thread to "Spada fought at the best of his possibilities against Rubio" then.

Yes, I concur with you he is not technically sublime, he is a short fighter who just like to go toe to toe and slug it out.. The best comparison that springs to my mind is Mayorga.
His main point is his physical strength, he tries to overcome the opponent bringing the fight to him. Had his career been based in North America, he would have probably fought as a welterweight; not dehydrating to make weight always makes him a smaller man in the ring, although it gives him an advantage in physical strength.

Spada has been fighting as a caveman for ten years, he caused a lot of problems to Zbik and in my opinion won their first match in Germany. Looking at his resumé, he has fought 4 fights in Germany brought in as an opponent, won 1 of them, lost 1 of them clearly and got robbed the other two times (1st Zbik and Oral). The rest of his career he just fought 6 rounders against soft opposition, and a tough fight against Barker in England.

Zbik and Rubio fought with some success against JCC jr, Spada can provide that level of competition I'd say, in the 10-20th range of middlewieght rankings.

Rubio didn't do a lot to deserve all the rounds been given to him. Perhaps he is accustomed to fight as the aggressor, and cannot fight well on the backfoot, like he had to against Spada. On the other hand, if he has really grown fighting so lethargically at this stage, he'll be in for a rude awakening in his next fights against worldclass opposition..

 

Rubio begins most of the clinches

 

At the beginning of the 5 and 9th round loudspeakers can be heard announcing the partial scorings in spanish

 

Let's hope Martinez doesn't injury himself in training for Cotto or during the Cotto fight. If he carries on fighting after that, he'll have to be hold together with glue and sellotape.. and eventually he'll crumble under his own weight à-la Solis against Klitschko