Lubin scores unanimous decision over Gausha
It wasn’t a thrilling performance, but Lubin did enough to get back into world title contention.
Erickson Lubin (23-1, 16 KOs) didn’t have a dynamite performance tonight in Showtime’s main event, but he did enough to secure a clear win over Terrell Gausha (21-2-1, 10 KOs) and work his way back towards title contention in a world title eliminator. Most of this fight was pretty god awful as far as action is concerned, with it being a very tentative fight with very little clean punches landed from either fighter through eight rounds.
Things did start picking up in the final stretch of the fight, but by that point Gausha was down pretty clearly as he hadn’t throw many clean punches. But in the 10th round Gausha managed to land a big shot that noticeably hurt Lubin, but Gausha was unable to follow up on that moment to finish off Lubin, who would in turn hurt Gausha in the 12th round to seal the win. After 12 rounds of action the official judges turned in a unanimous decision for Lubin with scores of 115-113, 116-112, and 118-110. BLH scored the fight 118-110 for Lubin as well.
With the win Lubin is in line to contend for the WBC world title, currently held by Jermell Charlo. Lubin, of course, was famously knocked out by Charlo a few years ago, but has said that he hopes to get a second bite at the apple knowing that he now holds the mandatory challenger position.
Tugstsogt Nyambayar SD-12 Cobia Breedy
Tugstsogt Nyambayar edged a close split decision win over Cobia Breedy tonight in what although was officially a win, was a rather ho-hum performance from Nyambayar. Official scores were 115-111 Breedy, and two scores of 114-112 and 114-113 in favor of Nyambayar.
Breedy actually came out fast and was outboxing Nyambayar early, but took a shot in the final seconds of the opening round that put him down and flipped the round in Nyambayar’s favor. Nyambayar would score a second knockdown in the second round, but was still largely outworked by Breedy for the remainder of the fight as Nyambayar just rarely let his hands go.
Nyambayar obviously had the power advantage in this fight, but Breedy would often beat him to the punch and Nyambayar was just a little too reserved for my liking against a guy who really seemed to want it more. That said, I too scored the fight a close win for Nyambayar, 114-112, with the early knockdowns being the difference. With the win Nyambayar moves on to 12-1, 9 KOs while Breedy suffers his first professional defeat, falling to 15-1, 5 KOs.
Jaron Ennis TKO-6 Juan Carlos Abreu
Welterweight prospect Jaron Ennis (26-0, 24 KOs) put on quite a spectacular performance tonight in Showtime’s opener, completely blitzing and overwhelming Juan Carlos Abreu (23-6-1, 21 KOs) from the opening bell. Ennis flashed a sharp jab, good hooks, great punch placement, and the ability to fluidly switch between an orthodox and southpaw stance.
Ennis clipped Abreu right from the beginning and then had his way with Abreu over the next several rounds, as Abreu expected to take some damage but hoped to take Ennis into the later going. The only problem with that plan was that Abreu had to survive into the later rounds, which he definitely couldn’t with the rate he was taking clean shots and combinations.
In the fifth round things started unraveling for Abreu when Ennis timed a perfectly placed counter uppercut that put Abreu down hard. It seemed Abreu would be down for the count at that point but he popped back up late in the count and asked to continue. Tensions rose after that, and Abreu damn near tried to attack Ennis after the bell. Ennis obviously didn’t like that energy and switched from boxing to straight up fighting Abreu in the following round, hurting him some more until Abreu went down twice more before the referee waved it off. The official stoppage came at the 1:06 mark of Round 6. All in all, Ennis certainly looks ready to take on the top fighters in the welterweight right now.