Gary Corcoran put up a little more resistance than at least I was expecting this morning in Brisbane, but in the end the fight was stopped in the eleventh against him anyway. It was a fun fight to watch in the early morning hours stateside.
Jeff Horn (18-0-1, 12 KOs) started the fight well by landing the sharper shots in the first, but England’s Gary Corcoran (17-2, 7 KOs) had a nice rally in a very fun second round. For those three minutes, the fight was a bit more of the war that the Englishman needed to win and I thought he edged the round. He couldn’t sustain it, however, and Horn re-established himself as the sharper puncher through the fifth round. Corcoran won the sixth on a nice little rally, but it would prove to be the last round I gave him.
After I thought a body shot clearly bothered the Brit in the seventh, the fight was increasingly all Jeff Horn. Corcoran was there, firing back, and landing a with some consistency, but he wasn’t coming particularly close to winning rounds in the second half of the fight. Jeff Horn came into the fight with a pre-existing cut that caused a lot of concern and he did end up bloodied, but the worse cut came over Gary Corcoran’s left eye. It worsened as the fight got closer to its close. Eventually referee Benji Esteves stepped in during the eleventh and stopped the fight on a combination of punishment and to preserve Corcoran’s eye. It was kind of an odd stoppage, but Horn had the fight locked up anyway.
I actually thought Horn didn’t fight his normal fight here despite his win. I have seen him fight many times. Traditionally the Australian likes to use his footwork to create angles and fire from the outside, but he just sort of engaged on an inside brawl here. The energy and rhythm just didn’t seem to be there. It could have been the massive weight cut draining his energy. The Hornet does this every fight, but as he ages it could become more of an issue. Horn also couldn’t spar over the last the few weeks of his camp, so perhaps he just wasn’t as sharp. Or maybe the simplest explanation is simply that Gary Corcoran was able to put on enough pressure to change his style.
Regardless, Horn likely moves on to greet Terence Crawford in the pound for pound elite’s divisional debut.
