the what fights did you watch today\scorecard thread.

Joe Brown UD10 Wallace Bud Smith

The first of the three meetings between the two and the only non-title fight.

It's an outstanding perfromance by Brown. The story goes (and i've never seen their second fight) that he won the title from Smith using his right onlyl in the first, fourteenth and last round after breaking his wrist in round two. Based on the first round here, that's believable. Brown used it like Ken Buchanan channeling the spirit of Joe Louis, showing great lateral movement also drifting back with a nice curvature, throwing out hard, varied jabs whilst avoiding punishment himself with slips the occasional (but by no means over-egged) feint, small moves, giving ground. The evolution of his offence during this fight is one of the more fascinating things i've seen in the ring.

In the second he introduces a flashy left hook, very short, Gavilan-like, stepping inside and to his left bringing it up sharply from nowhere. Brown uses an occasional up-jab, not a punch i'm a huge fan off, but he uses it properly and it serves to disguise this sneaky hook beautifully, there's no way to pick out an angle on him.

Smith takes the third on my card landing two booming rights, the first of which I think really hurt Old Bones, although he hid it well and boxed carefully. He was also conservative in the fourth, though he managed to peck, slither, snipe and box his way to that round also. The fifth was Taylor's second round of the fight for me as he brought serious harrowing pressure, taking it narrowly. But actually, even whebn Smith was coming forwards as in the sixth, Brown tended to lead, just narrowly, now introducing his own booming right, his most hurtful looking punch. In the seventh, I thought Smith started to wilt a little, cut in and outside of his mouth by jabs, cut underneath his left eye which was also closing behind those snapping right-hands. His problem was that if he waited or tried to counter, he lost the round big rather than close.

In the 8th, showing perfect timing that was most certainly not co-incidental, Brown dropped the hammer. All through the fight he would move off if things got heated on the inside, his corner telling him "Get out. Get out of there!" Now the corner was silent as Brown absolutely crucified the reigning (if fading) lightweight champoion on the inside. He hardly missed a punch, turning the right from a counter to a lead for the first time and putting together the individual shots - name one, he threw it - he'd been drubbing his man with throughout the fight into flashy, shocking combinations. He hardly missed a punch.

Smith obviously didn't care too much for round 8's mutton, and he instead sipped his way to the finish line through a straw, happy to suck up a steady stream of jabs and sniping rights in place of those meaty wallops. He didn't absorb any real punishment until the last minute of the tenth when he had the audacity to press the action again which saw Brown dump the exhausted champion handily over the middle rope for his troubles.

There are faster fighters, bigger hitters and if you rack your brains probably technically superior fighters, but more complete boxers?

Nah.

The offical cards read 99-92, 98-92, 100-88.

I had it 98-92 in ageement with the judges. The shutout belonged to the ref and is not unreasonable.

BROWN: 1,2,4,6,7,8,9,10
SMITH: 3,5

 

I also watched Brown's destruction on one round of Don Bowman. He could hit when the angles were right.