Contributor: Nolan Howell
A definitive winner was not in the cards Saturday night in Brooklyn, but WBC super middleweight titleholder Badou Jack and IBF champion James DeGale put on a show in a great fight that went to a majority draw.
DeGale controlled early with a first-round knockdown and Jack took a round or two to recover before gaining momentum. DeGale was timed on the awkward angles he landed from early and Jack seemed to connect anytime DeGale came too close. This in-fighting would lead to Jack finishing strong in the finals rounds and earning a knockdown in the final round. The judges scored two draws and gave one closely contested 114-112 card to DeGale, but both men had arguments as to who picked up the win.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mig4xVfMm4M
The two shared these arguments, but seemed to ping-pong back and forth on a rematch agreement in post-fight interviews. Promoter Floyd Mayweather stepped in on behalf of his fighter Jack and said no super middleweight matches, even for a rematch, were on the table for Jack on his way up to 175 lbs. The scene was just as hard to make sense of as picking a clear-cut victory. A rematch should be in the future for these two, but as it stands, both gained stocked and proved their place at 168.
In the main card opener, 22-year-old Gervonta Davis had a coming out party as he became the youngest champion in boxing today, finishing Jose Pedraza to take the IBF super featherweight title by seventh-round stoppage. Pedraza surprisingly stayed forehead to forehead with the power puncher and paid dearly, as Davis demonstrated slick head movement to avoid whatever Pedraza tried to return. A body blow in the sixth set up the finish in the next round as Pedraza was left to defend his liver and opened up head shots that felled him. Mayweather touted Davis as the future of boxing and, if performances like this are the norm, it is hard to disagree.
Elsewhere on the preliminaries, Amanda Serrano retained her WBO super bantamweight belt in a unanimous decision win against Yazmin Rivas in another scrappy, exciting demonstration for women’s boxing on television and middleweight Immanuwel Aleem upset Ievgen Khytrov by sixth-round KO in another FOTY candidate.
-Nolan can be reached @undercardnolan or at [email protected]
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