Just watched the May collision between 41 years old Guillermo Jones and Denis Lebedev.Absolutely terrific scrap Lebedev hit Jones with not only the kitchen sink but the mixer taps as well ,and still couldn't dent his chin. Lebedev was fighting with a right eye that resembled a cross between Basilio's against SRR and Rahman's against Holyfield,the fight was finally stopped on a count out in the 11th but should have been halted by Lebedev's corner ,[one of whom was Kostya Tzyu] after the 6th or 7th rd imo .I've always been a fan of referee Stan Cristodulou but he was disgraceful for not stopping this fight much earlier. A terrific scrap but one that may well be a career shortening one for Lebedev, whose corner should be ashamed of themselves, no ens-well to reduce the swelling they were reduced to holding a plastic bg filled with ice on the horrendous injury to Lebedev's right eye. Jones at 41 displayed wonderful versatility and foot work and his punch resistance was remarkable , especially for such a veteran . If I had a contender in that division, I would put him in with Lebedev now because I doubt he will be the same again. If you haven't seen it, I advise you to watch this war.
Very BRUTAL war!. I forget which round it was but Lebedev lands like a huge 3-4 punch combo that clearly backs jones up. How he was able to survive those shots is remarkable.
On the RBR at the time, I remember posting how one of the craziest aspects of the fight was that Jones was able to make 200 in the first place. Needless to say in hindsight, the illegal diuretics he used gave him a big advantage. It looked like they were two weight classes apart by fight night. Shame, because it was a classic brawl if not for Jones' cheating tainting it.
^ that... I loved it at the time, until Lebedev's eye looked so bad it was insane not to stop it. But now we know what was really happening that night, and it was what some of us already feared. A full blown, iron chinned weightcheating HW was walking down the technically better Cruiserweight. Lebedev rightfully got his belt back, but might have his career destroyed because of a cheater, a stupid corner and referee.
Apparently there was no permanent damage - I hear (though I haven't seen confirmation) that it was fully healed after four weeks.
Ya Lebedev was training 2 weeks later and was in the Povetkin/Drozd camp. WBA ordered a rematch and gave Jones a retroactive suspension of 6 months, 5 already served, which is a joke.
Lebedev started to land the left as soon as the first round and Jones managed to walk through the whole fight. Obviously, there was "medecine" involved but if like some people claim, that stuff he took (and tried to hide by using Diuretics) doesn't have an effect on your ability to take shots, then why the hell did Jones fight once every 2 years making no money at CW when he would have had the chin and size to make a lot of it at heavyweight ?
