In the easily the best fight of the Friday Night Fight broadcast this year and arguably of the whole year, Wolak and Rodriguez reminds us of why we love boxing. Wolak and Rodriguez fought 10 hard fought, with an exclamation point for round 9, and hard to score rounds before settling on a majority draw. This fight had the crowd screaming for both fighters.
For those of you who like gruesome boxing injuries, look no further. While Erislandy Lara's head last weekend was bulging and a nasty sight, it didn't come close to the size and the affect that is had on him as Wolak's eye.
Rodriguez had an opening for a right uppercut through most of the fight with Wolak coming in and yet chose to do most of his work with his straight right hand (his money punch) as evidenced by Wolak's eye. Wolak's gameplan was very straight forward, by that, I mean it was very straight forward. He tried to maul Delvin and paid the price on numerous occasions.
Credit is due to Rodriguez for being able to stick to try to fight tall and continue to force the shorter, pressure fighter, to come towards you and implement the game plan of punching off the back foot. There were questions coming into the fight for Rodriguez's career. He is now 2-3-1 in his last 6 fights but I think he has answered some of the answers from the critics that are calling for his retirement.
Wolak, who is never in a dull fight, will surely be in another good matchup later on this year. While I'm sure us boxing junkies would love a rematch and there are rumors that it will land on the Margarito V Cotto II card, making that card an absolute MUST BUY.
If you didn't watch this fight, it is still available via streaming replay on ESPN3.com. Free, streaming, good fight, what other reasons do you need to waste 40 minutes to be entertained.
Brian Viloria (29-3, 16 KOs) UD Julio Miranda (28-4, 16 KOs) for WBO Miranda's flyweight belt.
Judges Robert Hoyle (98-91) Ruben Garcia (96-93) and Tamotsu Tomihara (97-93) favored Viloria.
In Miranda's fourth defense, he was blitzed by Viloria in the opening bell and was out punched and out worked through the entire fight. Viloria showed great body punching ability, a very good jab and worked through a cut that opened up on his eye in the eighth round.
"Pingo" Miranda had trouble making the 112 weight limit and had to sweat off two pounds. It was a tough fight and both the champion and the challenger seemed to enjoy the brutality of it. Miranda had a pretty clear elbow and low blow that wasn't called by referee Joe Cortez in the 6th round that was answered by a rally by Viloria.
The newly crowned champion was also fighting on home turf in Hawaii and Miranda, who is likely not going to get a rematch, would be wise to fight somewhere more neutral. The most interesting part of the fight? When the scores were read. How did the judges miss two rounds of action? Did they decide that 10 rounds was enough?
There are interested fights for the entire flyweight division to be made and it is nice to see Viloria, yet another action fighter, to be in the mix as well.
I guess it is because I am a girl, I just do not see the attraction to fights. I found your blog as the result of research I am doing on fighting and the attraction to fighting. Coming form the point of view as a person who does not understand it and trying to figure out what the attraction is, perhaps you could use this as an idea for a future blog post - Understanding the attraction to fights. I realize the cost of tickets to see a fight in person can be huge, so obviously a person must really enjoy watching this sport to pay so much to see it.
ReplyDeleteGood blog in general.