Boxing Blogging: 6/13/07

ESPN had somewhat of sub-standard card tonight, name-wise. What they shared in common was that in both fights, the first few rounds made me think a knockout was coming, and in both fights, the weaker fighter in those rounds rallied to make for quite interesting duels.

The lead undercard was a relatively insignificant 8-round bout between Ramon Montero and Lowell Brownfield. Montero came into this bout with 1 KO in over 16 fights. But it looked as if he was going to get one here, as he was landing at will against a game but seemingly over-matched Brownfield. However, as round five started, Brownfield made some key adjustments, switching stances and moving around, which got him back into the fight and made Montero into the frustrated fighter. Unfortunately, despite showing good adaptability, it was too little, too late, and Montero won a unanimous decision. He improved to 13-4-2 (1 KO), while Brownfield dropped to 9-4 (3 KOs).

The main event featured the solid Edner "Cherry Bomb" Cherry fighting against untested, Floyd Mayweather promoted prospect Wes Ferguson--in Cherry's backyard. Worse yet for Ferguson is that he's not a power puncher--only 4 KOs entering the fight. However, Ferguson was reputed to be a very fast and slick boxer--a similar style to Paulie Malignaggi, who dominated Cherry in his last fight a few months back.

Cherry started off hot, dominating Ferguson in the first three rounds. Cherry was able to land at will at the inside and use his superior muscle to rough up the young Ferguson along the way. Ferguson wasn't throwing all that much (unlike Malignaggi), and didn't seem to have the power to keep Cherry off him.

But as the fight continued, Ferguson showed a tremendous amount of heart. The more he got heart, the more he wanted to trade, and the more he wanted to let his hands fly. He stole a few of the middle rounds through sheer effort, and suddenly the fight was a lot more exciting than I thought it would be. But unfortunately for Ferguson, while he was able to start landing solid punches, and had the grit to trade with the bigger Cherry, his lack of power meant that he was perpetually on the losing end of their exchanges. Cherry ended up winning a close but comfortable unanimous decision. But give Ferguson credit--he never went down, and even though he isn't considered a puncher he was going for the knockout in the last couple rounds--and eating some powerful right hands for his efforts.

Cherry improved to 22-5-2 (10 KOs), while Ferguson lost his second fight, falling to 16-2-1 (4 KOs).

And before I leave y'all, I want to briefly note something about another integral part of the ESPN fight experience: the commercials. Watching them makes me painfully aware that I am not the target demographic (the breaks are dominated by Just For Men and Cialis). The JFM commercials are uniformly bad--if I were to raise all my gripes about them, it would double the length of this post. But the Cialis commercials, while normally fine, irk me when--in fine print at the bottom--they note that the drug does not protect against HIV or STDs. What could possibly motivate someone to think it did? Is Cialis really battling against a false reputation that it is the genital-wonder-drug, curing any and all ailments of the penis? I mean, I know people are dumb, but this is unbelievable. It's like wondering if Advil kills brain tumors because it works on migraines, both of which are located in the head.