Mikey Garcia earned his fourth world title in a more competitive than expected twelve round decision over Sergey Lipinets in Texas. It was a high level and entertaining fight in which Lipinets legitimized himself as a top fighter despite the clear loss. Kiryl Relikh picked up his first world title in the same weight class in the show’s opener.
The two main event combatants had a traditional low volume, feeling out opening round. Only Mikey Garcia (38-0, 30 KOs) landed anything of note, so he took it by default. The second round was even more emphatic for the potentially soon to be four division champion as he got into range and peppered Sergey Lipinets (13-1, 10 KOs) with his his crisp, technical combinations. Lipinets did bloody Mikey’s nose with a jab at the end of the round, however. Sergey kept the momentum from that jab going early in the third with a couple nice shots, but Garcia stole it back late with a series of beautiful one twos.
The fourth round was very similar to the third, just a little harder to score. Lipinets again was very effective early and Garcia came back with a series of one twos. The difference this time was that the Russian titleholder kept working in the second half and got some good body work done there too. I scored it for him very narrowly. The fifth was again close with Mikey again rallying late to probably steal it. The sixth round was yet another highly competitive round. This time I felt Lipinets edged it. I liked how he moved Garcia to the ropes a couple times.
Sergey looked to initially be carrying his momentum into the seventh round on a series of excellent shots, but he over committed to his power. Mikey Garcia’s technical prowess shot through his aggression with his patented counter left hook, dropping the Russian hard to the canvas for the first time in his career. This was a huge moment that swung a potential round for Sergey Lipinets into a 10-8 round for Mikey Garcia.
The defending titleholder rebounded pretty well in a competitive eighth round. I thought his body work carried it, though yet again late one twos from Mikey Garcia almost stole it back. Mikey won a more technical, slower paced ninth round clearly in response before doing so even more emphatically in the tenth. Lipinets ate some big shots in that round.
The championship rounds began with a highly competitive eleventh round in which Sergey Lipinets got some quality work done despite starting to look tired for the first time. He still ate a few one twos, but I like how he worked his own right hand in the eleventh. The seemingly about to be four division world titleholder got on his toes and boxed his way to winning the twelfth and final round to secure his win though. He also worked in a pair of hellacious left hooks that Lipinets took well at a pair of points in the round.
I scored the fight 116-111 for Mikey Garcia. Official scores came back repeating my score once with the other two rounds going one round wider at 117-110. Post-fight the new junior welterweight titleholder gave Lipinets a lot of credit and talked about an eventual move to welterweight. He did also say he’d like to go down and unify at lightweight first. The dethroned man chalked the loss largely up to experience and likely rightfully so.
Mikey Garcia has of course secured his slice of boxing history with his fourth world title here. He also staked a strong claim towards owning the number three spot in the pound for pound rankings behind Vasyl Lomachenko and Terence Crawford. Yet, it was Sergey Lipinets that I left impressed with after watching this fight. I knew Mikey Garcia could fight at the absolute highest level of the sport, but I didn’t know the Russian could be competitive on that level. After his struggles with the much more lowly regarded Akihiro Kondo in his vacant title win, Lipinets used this performance to prove himself a true world class fighter even in clear defeat
In the main card’s opener, Kiryl Relikh (22-2, 19 KOs) earned a near shut out decision over former two division world titleholder Rances Barthelemy (26-1, 13 KOs) to claim the vacant WBA junior welterweight title. The Cuban won their first fight with some controversy, though I will note I thought that was largely manufactured by a questionable Showtime aired scorecard. I had it for Barthelemy like the judges did.
This fight was was like an alternate reality of the first matchup. In their first tilt, the Belorussian contender used a high workrate to out throw and out land Rances Barthelemy, but that is not how boxing is scored. The two division titleholder was able to land excellent shots that I thought carried more rounds, especially to the body.
This time Relikh turned the volume up even louder, totaling over 1200 punches over twelve rounds. He directly took Barthelemy out of the fight by exploiting his Arthur Abraham like tendency to cover up when being attacked. Simply by never stopping punching, Kiryl Relikh made it so Rances would rarely punch back. Comically and tellingly, Barthelemy threw almost seventy less punches a round than Kiryl Relikh thanks to this strategy.
Neither man was notably hurt in the bout, except for Relikh thanks to several low blows. Rances Barthelemy lost a point midway through the fight due to the repeated infraction. Final scores came back 118-109 twice, which was also my score, and 117-110 once. Rances Barthelemy looked like shit in this fight, but he was classy post-fight in applauding Relikh’s effort. Kiryl Relikh was emotional post-fight celebrating becoming Belarus’s third world titleholder.
Richard Commey (26-2, 23 KOs), Mario Barrios (21-0, 13 KOs), and Brandon Figueroa (15-0, 10 KOs) all picked up wins on the Showtime Extreme preliminary broadcast as well. Commey won an IBF eliminator over previously unbeaten PBC prospect Alejandro Luna (22-1, 15 KOs) in an entertaining, back and forth fight by sixth round stoppage. It was a really good showing in an important fight that makes Ghanaian the mandatory challenger for Robert Easter Jr’s IBF lightweight belt. The two have previously met with Easter winning an extremely narrow decision that could have gone either way.
Barrios and Figueroa stopped Eudy Bernardo (23-3, 17 KOs) and Giovanni Delgado (16-7, 9 KOs) in the second and seventh rounds respectively. Barrios’s win was on a highlight reel, one punch knockout. It was also the best he has looked in a while, though I will caution that Bernardo appears to have a fragile chin and definitely has an extremely inflated record. I haven’t been that high on Barrios since his body made him go up to 140 lbs, but there was nothing wrong with this performance. Brandon Figueroa simply put a beaten on his overmatched opponent that should have been stopped a couple rounds sooner.
