Terence Crawford (41-0, 31 KOs) edged WBA junior middleweight champion Israil Madrimov (10-1-1, 7 KOs) by a twelve round unanimous decision on Saturday night at the BMO Stadium in Los Angeles.
The scores were 116-112, 115-113 and 115-113. Boxing News 24 scored it for Crawford 7-5. It was close. Terence’s work in the 11th and 12th rounds pulled out the victory, but it was razor close.
“I believe I did enough because I was the champion. At least, I deserve thee rematch,” said Madrimov after the fight. “If His Excellency Turki Alalshikh can make the remsstch, let’s go. “I felt I did enough in each round. I was holding myself back. In the rematch, I know what to do, and I can push harder.”
– In an upset, Jose ‘Rayo’ Valenzuela (14-2, 9 KOs) defeated WBA light welterweight champion Isaac ‘Pitbull’ Cruz (26-3-1, 18 KOs) by a twelve-round split decision. The scores were 116-112 for Rayo, 115-113 for Cruz, and 116-112 for Rayo. Boxing News 24 scored it for Valenzuela 8-4.
Cruz was outboxed the entire fight and picked off by the more powerful and technical Rayo Valenzuela. In the sixth round, Rayo stunned Pitbull Cruz with an uppercut.
In the championship rounds, Cruz was pressured and ineffective due to Rayo’s movement and jabbing. Surprisingly, Rayo frequently backed Cruz up in rounds eight through twelve. Cruz hit Rayo with a low blow in the eighth round, and he needed time to recover.
– Former heavyweight champion Andy Ruiz Jr. (35-2-1, 22 KOs) and Jarrell Miller (26-1-2, 22 KOs) fought to a twelve-round majority draw. The scores were 116-112 for Miller, 114-114, and 114-114.
Miller was the busier, more energetic fighter from the fourth round on and appeared to win most of the rounds. Coming off a two-year-old layoff, the 34-year-old Ruiz didn’t have much energy after failing to score a knockout in the first quarter of the contest.
The 305-lb Miller walked Ruiz down in the second half of the fight, hitting him with short punches, working his body, and pushing him away when attempting to clinch.
– Heavyweight contender Martin Bakole (21-1, 16 KOs) destroyed previously unbeaten Jared Anderson (17-1, 15 KOs) by a fifth-round knockout in a minor upset win. Looking like a retro version of Sonny Liston, Bakole dropped Anderson three times in the contest. Bakole knocked Jared down in the first and twice in the fifth round to get the knockout.
Anderson, 24, was bleeding from the mouth after the fourth round and looked in bad shape heading to the fifth.
Using mostly arm punches, the Liston-esque Bakole tore into Jared like a shark in the fifth, nailing him repeatedly with short punches that looked like they were thrown effortlessly. After Martine dropped Anderson twice, the referee waved off the fight.
David Morrell (11-0, 9 KOs) labored to a 12-round unanimous decision win over Radivoje “Hot Rod” Kalajdzic (29-3, 21 KOs) to capture the WBA World Light Heavyweight title. The scores were 118-110, 117-111, and 117-111.
Making his debut at 175, the former WBA ‘Regular’ super middleweight champion Morrell, 26, fought in spurts and did not fight for a full three minutes of every round. Morrell used an ear muff defensive style, which allowed Kalajdzic to land a lot of shots on him.
When Morrell did let his hands go in combination, he was effective, but he was busy enough in the second half of the fight. Kalajdzic did a lot of clinching to stymie Morrell’s offense when they were in close.
In the eighth round, Morrell hurt Kalajdzic with a right hand, but he couldn’t finish him due to failing to continue firing punches. Morrell’s trainer, Ronnie Shields, was not pleased with his performance. He urged him to fight the full three minutes of each round, but he wouldn’t follow his instructions.
2020 Olympic gold medalist Andy Cruz (4-0, 2 KOs) showed a different side of his game, out-slugging veteran Antonio Moran (30-6-1, 21 KOs), scoring a seventh round knockout.
Cruz, 28, hurt Moran with a right hand in the seventh and then flurried on him with power shots, causing the Mexican fighter to fall against the ropes. Cruz initially called it a knockdown, but after seeing Moran stagger away from the ring, he waved it off.
In the fourth round, Moran hurt Cruz with a left hook to the head that knocked him off balance and caused him to move around to survive.
Steven Nelson kept his perfect record untarnished, moving up to 19-0-0 after sending Marcos Vázquez Rodríguez to the canvas more times than we needed to count in their super middleweight bout. After hitting the canvas twice in the third and once more in the fifth, he was mercifully counted out.
On the other end of the hype spectrum, Ziyad Almaayouf and Michal Bulik scraped through a welterweight fight that ended in a controversial majority draw. Almaayouf, supposedly the next big thing with a 5-0-0 record, couldn’t quite convince all the judges he deserved the win against Bulik, whose less-than-stellar 6-7-0 record should have made him an easy target.