the what fights did you watch today\scorecard thread.

Appreciate it. You handed anything in lately?

 

Yoko Gushiken SD15 Jame Rios.

How this is split is beyond me. The card in favour of Rios has to be one of the worst i've ever seen.

Gushiken's first defence of his WBA light-fly strap starts promisingly enough, with a mobile, flashy Rios firing out quick straight shots from a bouncing high energy platform that earned him the second round on my card. In the third, he flashed Gushiken, ditching him for a three count with a lightning quick counter-shot form underneath, where he lurked throughout, being two inches shorter, and often fighting out of a dipping, crouching style laced with persistent bounding left-right movement. Gushiken pressures his way back in in the fourgh and it's Rios who eneds up in trouble. Gushiken starts to throw his uppercut to the gut, and at this point the fight is basically over as a contest. Gushiken dominates with this punch for the next few rounds, going to the belly repeatedly, and Rios has all the energy and legs just sapped out of him. What started off as an exciting and challanging style that saw him ahead on my card until the end of the fifth, he's forced into the trenches for at least a spot in every round thereafter. The best I could do was give him a share of the eleventh, when he briefly reclaimed that high-octane style for the first 90 seconds.

Gushiken was cut in the fifth though, and it's not like Rios was entirely without his successes thereafter, but it was always, always Gushiken landing the harder punches and in variety, hook, straight, uppercuts, and most of all that uppercut to the body. A cuople of times, I think in 7 and 8, Rios was establishing himself and then he would ship those uppercuts and that would be that, no startch.

The 12th is especially painful to watch and I always kind of wish this was a 12 round fight, because there is not much of interest hereafter. Rios is done.

Destrcutive performance from Gushiken is the only reason to revisit this one.


Gushiken: 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15

Rios: 2, 3(with a knockdown)

Even: 11

 

"Plodding" doesn't fit for Gonzalez at all, unless Gushiken is plodding also. Gonzalez delivers more variety in his leads, too.

 

Well i'll wait until we've seen him box the top men at 108 before making that judgement. Should that ever happen...

 

I don't object to his fighting ugly though. Those pushy rushes are what lay an opponent low enough that he can be dragged back into his type of fight. He looks disorganised when he rushes, but he's landing and well.

Based upon footage of Gonzalez against Takayama and Gushiken against Rios, i'd name Gonzalez better at cutting of the ring.

 

Jimmy Ellis MD15 Jerry Quarry.

Odd, odd fight! Quarry spends most of the match trying to trick Ellis onto the ropes simply by walking back there. But on one out of three occasions, Ellis would just drop his arms to his sides and walk straight back, refusing to come in. Quarry's home crowd, furious. But Ellis was absolutley right in what he did. First of all, he wasn't the only one refusing to make a fight of it. And second of all, he absolutey wanted to avoid being brought onto Quarry's counter-punches. Ellis refused to lead throughout in fact, unless he could see the right punch, which was usually a lead right hand to the jaw. He hurt Quarry several times leading with this punch. He also had success early doors, dominating the fight early with a flicking, accurate jab.

Quarry worked his way into the fight with body-punching and persistance, although he did have a moment in the 13th, I think it was, when he absolutley cracked Ellis with a left-hook, best punch of the fight. But then, instead of pressing, he went back to the ropes and waited for Ellis again! With his corner screaming at him to get in there, he tried to tempt Ellis onto him. Ellis did exactly the right thing, standing just out of range and making little half-feints like he was thinkging about coming in, and Quarry's moment had passed.

One judge somehow had it 10-5 Ellis, and although that is crazy, he did "feel" like the winner. The fight that crowned Ellis the WBA champ, also bringing him something called the Boxing Illustrated Trophy, suffered by it's reputation as dull, but i always enjoy this one. A really weird mesh of styles and tactics. My copy has no round 12, but Durham and Fleischer, scoring ringside, both gave it to Quarry, so I went with him to fill out my scorecard.

Ellis: 1, 3, 4, 8, 9, 10

Quarry: 5, 6, 11, 12, 13

Even: 2, 7, 14, 15

So 6-5-4 Ellis.