With a busy Saturday now complete, Miguel Berchelt topped it by winning a decision that was simultaneously one sided and quite grueling over Takashi Miura. In the co-main event, Jezreel Corrales successfully defended his WBA junior lightweight title via a very competitive and exciting ten round technical decision over Robinson Castellanos. The fight was stopped due to a massive accidental headbutt in the tenth. Sullivan Barrera also scored somewhat of an upset over Hopkins conqueror Joe Smith Jr in the light heavyweight opening contest.
A slow opening frame in the main event suddenly became significant when a counter left hand from Miguel Berchelt (32-1, 28 KOs) surprised Takashi Miura (31-4-2, 24 KOs), dropping him and creating a 10-8 round out of nothing. From there, Berchelt more or less went on to outclass his Japanese challenger in a minor sort of way. Miura was there the whole time; he never stopped throwing and landing. He just couldn’t accomplish as much as Berchelt. For every moment of success that Takashi found, the Mexican belt holder created three or four more.
The fight never really heated up to the level of war that it was booked to be, but it wasn’t a bad fight either. Miguel Berchelt was better on his feet, has much more coordinated hands, and Miura was never able to demonstrate the sort of power that he has in fights passed. Berchelt simply just didn’t let him land more than one shot at a time. Over the last three or so rounds, Miura did establish a brutal, energy sapping body attack that was quite savage to watch. Yet, Berchelt was still mostly winning the rounds with his vastly superior skills even as he began to struggle to get through them.
This was a complete performance from the WBC junior lightweight champion. Given that he is not with a power promoter that will try to protect him, a fight with top pound for pound fighter Vasyl Lomachenko seems realistic at the weight. The list of fighters who could trouble Lomachenko junior lightweight and south is a short one, if it truly exists at all, but if one was to be made Miguel Berchelt would have to be on it. That would be as good as a fight that can be made for Loma.
In the co-main event, Jezreel Corrales (22-1, 8 KOs) and Robinson Castellanos (24-13, 14 KOs) put on an entertaining, back and forth fight for the WBA junior lightweight title. Panama’s Corrales started strong, but everything flipped in the fourth. At the beginning of the round, Mexico’s Castellanos caught Corrales off balance with a stiff lead hand shot that dropped him. It didn’t really hurt the Panamanian titleholder, but a big right hand later in the round that dropped him again did.
Castellanos had midfight success following the two knockdowns, but Corrales stole the momentum back in the seventh. In the eighth, Corrales seemed to bother his Mexican challenger with a series of shots. I believe this sequence weakened the legs of Castellanos. Shortly after, Corrales through a big straight left. Castellanos blocked it, but in his weakened state it dropped him anyway. Yet, immediately in the ninth, he rallied back despite having been down just one round before.
Unfortunately, the fight came to a premature halt early in the tenth when Jezreel accidentally landed a huge headbutt underneath Robinson’s left eye. The butt did some serious damage, visibly hurting the challenger and opening a big cut. The ringside physician decided to call an end to the contest. The 31 seconds of the tenth round were scored, leading a narrow majority decision in favor of Jezreel Corrales. I definitely do not have an issue with a narrow win for either fight, but I do want to talk about the cards for a second.
At the time of this writing, I have not seen the cards. My concern here is the scoring of the 31 second tenth round. I really hope it was a draw across the board as neither fighter had yet accomplished anything. With one card being a draw and another a one point win for Corrales, either of those judges having scored the tenth for Corrales would have had a significant impact on the outcome in a way that I do not deem fair. I had it a draw.
Moving on, one left hand aside, Sullivan Barrera won every minute of his Boxing After Dark opening bout against Joe Smith Jr. Barrera even dominated the opening frame, but he ended up losing it 10-8 when one counter left hook clipped him on the top of the head and dropped him hard about twenty or so seconds before the bell. As the HBO commentary team reminded us again and again, Joe Smith’s power is very real and he displayed it by putting his Cuban adversary on the canvas emphatically.
Otherwise, Joe Smith accomplished nothing in this fight. He was a significantly inferior fighter to Barrera in all aspects of the sport. Looking slow, unsure of himself, and at times a little uncoordinated, the construction worker by day, fighter by night just could not find the former Cuban amateur standout in the ring. Meanwhile, Barrera peppered him at will. This is a career altering performance for Barrera as he has now set himself up for another big fight going forward with this win.
I do want to make a small point about the commentary for and overall handling of this fight as it was very strange. The team as a whole insisted on forcing a narrative through the first half of the fight about Joe Smith’s power rather than talking about the beating he was receiving in front of their eyes. Later, Max Kellerman praised Smith’s corner for appealing to his emotions when what they were really doing is failing to give any tactical advice whatsoever. Kellerman then even later went on an odd tangent that basically amounted to calling Kell Brook a quitter for having his face literal broken against two giant punchers, a fighter many weight classes down who was not involved at all here.
Then there was the fiasco of HBO thinking this was a twelve round fight the whole way only to find it it was a ten round fight with about a minute left. It sounds like they weren’t communicated with properly, but it was a bad look overall from a normally strong crew at HBO.
