Independence Day Weekend Results

This weekend was dedicated mostly to July Fourth festivities but there were fights. Several championships were on the line this weekend. The results were competitive fights and a championship changing hands.

Abdullah Mason Overcame Adversity to Retain Title

22 year old WBO Lightweight Champion Abdullah Mason made the first defense of his title last night in his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. The result was controversial in two ways; the stoppage and the scorecards. In a fight that appeared very close, Mason came out swinging to start the twelfth round. The two week’s notice substitute for Joe Cordina, Albert Bell, gave a great account of himself. The DAZN commentary team had the fight 105-104 Bell and after scouring Yahoo, Bad Left Hook, ESPN, and Sports Illustrated the publications that posted scores had it close. The official judges had Mason up 106-103 and 107-102 twice which are shockingly bad scores. Ohio does not often have championship level fights and as a fan that watches boxing closely, I don’t think I’ve ever seen these judges before.

Mason did not know how ahead he was when he launched his final assault. Bell had appeared to build a strong lead after five rounds. Mason came to life in the second half scoring behind his lead left from the southpaw stance and bloodied Bell’s nose. Bell was very sneaky with his right hand lead and backed it up with a jab. Mason had swept the second half and was coming on strong when he dropped Bell. Bell went down early in the twelfth round and was certainly hurt and tired. Moments later Mason followed up with a few shots and pushed Bell down. Referee Mark Nelson initially made a bad call to rule the push a knockdown. Then he inexplicably waved the fight off as a technical knockout for Mason.

I believe Mason was going to stop Bell anyway as he had way more in the tank and was pursuing the stoppage. However, that belief does not replace the fact that the stoppage call was bad and should be viewed with controversy. I don’t necessarily think this was an “exposed” situation for Mason. The young champion is still learning and Bell had a significant height advantage and fought with an excellent game plan. Mason showed a ton of maturity in the back half of the fight turning the ship around and getting the job done. Mason has no control over the judges and referees and took the fight into his own hands at the end.

Bruce Carrington Retains Title in Clear Decision

Carrington is a fighter that I got to see live at Madison Square Garden in his previous two appearances. I watched him win the WBC Interim Featherweight title against Mateus Heita where he won a unanimous decision in a fairly dull bout. My takeaway was that he had plenty of talent but lacked the punching power or variety to deter and elite fighter. In his next bout he fought for the vacant WBC Featherweight Title and scored a highlight reel KO over Carlos Castano. Castano was not elite competition but the win was an improvement upon his Heita performance and hopefully a step in the right direction.

Last night he was on the Co-main event of Mason-Bell defending his title for the first time against undefeated 19-0-1 Rene Palacios. Admittedly, I only caught the tail end of this contest as I was celebrating Fourth of July. There were two moments in the fight that marred an otherwise solid performance. Carrington was dropped by a right hook which referee Harvey Dock ruled a slip. Carrington down on one knee protested and the referee acquiesced. There was some rumblings over the call online but I think it was a foul and should not have been ruled a knockdown. In the eleventh round, Palacios caught Carrington to the body and visibly hurt the champion. Carrington cruised a bit in the final round with WBC open scoring letting him know he was well out in front. The result was a clear cut decision win but the performance leaves something to be desired for a lot of fans online. Carrington has made some waves calling out Naoya Inoue, I don’t know if last night’s performance is the selling point he needed but we shall see.

Austin Trout Suffers Brutal KO Loss

Former WBA Junior Middleweight Champion Austin Trout has been successfully campaigning in bare knuckle boxing over the last few years. The aging former champion built a record of 5-0 in BKFC and held a title in their organization. On Friday July 3 he was knocked out cold by a looping right hand in an upset loss. The 40 year old suffered his first KO (he has a stoppage loss but it was a retirement between rounds) where he was laid out and down for what felt like a few minutes before being sat on a stool and examined. It is hard to watch old champions go out like that. Trout has been the most successful championship level boxer to make the move into bare knuckle boxing. Other champions like Paulie Malinaggi and James DeGale made the move without success. Trout was dropped immediately in the first round by the same punch that ultimately did the job in the second round.

William Scull KO’s Evander Castillo in 4

Former IBF Super Middleweight Champion William Scull snapped a two fight losing streak yesterday with a KO win over Evander Castillo in Germany. The 34 year old Cuban is best known for picking up the IBF title that Saul Alvarez relinquished with a controversial decision win over Vladimir Shishkin. Scull proceeded to lose the title back to Alvarez by decision in a very dull performance where he did very little in the way of offense. Scull was stopped by rising contender Jacob Bank in his rebound fight. Scull is back to his winning ways as the division has opened up with Alvarez losing his titles to Terrence Crawford who retired and vacated all the championship titles. Scull is not currently ranked in any of the four sanctioning bodies but it will be interesting to see if the win gets him back on the board at least with the IBF.