The results from London’s IBF title doubleheader are in. As expected, Lee Selby successfully defended his featherweight title. The main event did not go according to plan, however, with Caleb Truax scoring a massive upset decision win over James DeGale to win his belt.
James DeGale (23-2-1, 14 KOs) fought a bizarre fight. After mostly controlling it for the first two rounds, the 2008 Olympic gold medalist just began backing to the ropes. Caleb Truax (29-3-2, 18 KOs) simply walked in and fired. He probably edged the third and fourth based on activity on the ropes, but there was no question in the fifth. At the middle point of the round, Truax unleashed a monstrous combination with two huge uppercuts that had DeGale in trouble.
The English fighter had a better run at times throughout the fight from there, but he couldn’t consistently win rounds. He still backed into the ropes for no reason for the entirety of the contest. The Minnesotan challenger would simply walk right in without anything keeping him away. He wasn’t jabbing, bobbing, weaving, coming in behind a guard, or punching at all to get in. He’d walk forward and DeGale would let him.
Still, the incoming titleholder found his spots and Truax wasn’t running away with rounds. DeGale was there and picked up a few, but largely the unheralded challenger was simply winning them on activity against the ropes that DeGale insisted on fighting off of. Another flurry in the second half of the fight seemed to cement the fight in the challenger’s favor, but then he let off the gas in the championship rounds and brought it back into question.
I ended up with a draw and thought that was about as generous as a card could fairly get for the James DeGale. I fully expected him to get the win at home, however, as that is just how boxing goes. Surprisingly, I was wrong. The first card came back a draw like my own, but the last two overruled it by scores of 116-112 and 116-111. Somehow, longtime Minnesota club fighter Caleb Truax is your new IBF super middleweight titleholder.
Despite the big win, I still don’t really see Caleb Truax as a world class fighter before. He has been blown out at that level historically before. James DeGale simply looked like an absolute train wreck. He is going to need a lot of work to ever be a world level fighter again at this point.
With the exception of a few rounds after the fight’s midpoint, IBF featherweight titleholder Lee Selby (26-1, 9 KOs) mostly cruised to a clear win over Mexican challenger Eduardo Ramirez (20-1, 3 KOs) in the co-main event. Selby started extremely well. He won the first six rounds on beautiful work with his movement and left hooks both upstairs and downstairs. Really his left hand landed at will and his right wasn’t too bad either.
Ramirez would have his spots, but never really came close to winning rounds until the seventh. From there to the ninth, the young challenger was able to keep the rounds extremely close if not outright win them as Selby became increasingly sloppy in his work. The Welshmen righted the ship in the tenth, however, and had an especially great final round in which he had Ramirez in a bit of trouble. I scored the bout 117-110 and all three cards came back within a round of that.
In the two supporting bouts to the pair of world title fights, top English prospects Anthony Yarde (14-0, 13 KOs) and Daniel Dubois (6-0, 6 KOs) both picked up victories. The 20 year old heavyweight opened the show by bashing Dorian Darch (12-6-1, 1 KO) around the ring for two rounds, dropping him four times before the stoppage. That was expected. What was at least a little more impressive was Anthony Yarde’s four round execution of Nikola Sjekloca (32-5-1, 11 KOs) of Montenegro. Yarde still gets hit too much, but given that the Montenegrin was coming off a draw with Robert Stieglitz and had never previously been stopped in almost forty fights, it was still a good showing.
