It wasn’t the card we were promised, but the show went on absent Jose Ramirez. In the new main event, Egidijus Kavaliauskas took a competitive decision over Juan Carlos Abreu while Andy Vences Jr picked up a win in the co-main event as well. Neither fight was pretty though.
Both men were unfortunately cut on a clash of heads in an otherwise uneventful first round of the main event. The blood wasn’t mattering, but it was clear by the end of the second round that the styles of the two combatants were not going to mesh well in this fight. “The Mean Machine” Egidijus Kavaliauskas (20-0, 16KOs) was having an extremely difficult time getting inside the very wide stance of Juan Carlos Abreu (21-4-1, 19 KOs). When he did, the Dominican would tie him up. If anything, Abreu was getting the better of the fight at range at times, though you wouldn’t know it from listening to the ESPN team.
The plot thickened a bit in the fifth round. At some point earlier in the fight Abreu opened a second cut over The Mean Machine’s left eye with a punch and it was really bothering the Lithuanian. If the fight were to be stopped on that cut, it would be a TKO win over the Dominican underdog. The cut was better in the sixth though even if the fight wasn’t. The Mean Machine came out mauling and aggressive in the seventh, but Abreu responded with effective aggression of his own almost immediately. To my eye this was a closer fight than the broadcast would lead the viewer to believe going into the last three rounds. I had it 4-3 Kavaliauskas. He took a clear, much needed eighth round almost exclusively on jabs though thanks to Abreu landing next to nothing. Going into the ninth round for the first time, it looked like Egidijus maybe had Abreu finally figured out, but then the Dominican came out and ripped a few nice right hands to take the round. He won the tenth too with forward aggression over a tiring Kavaliasukas.
Look, I scored this fight a draw, 95-95. I fully concede that that is probably as generous as possible for Abreu, but that is how I saw it. There were many rounds in which neither man got a lot done but Abreu would catch his opponent with a good right hand or two. He wasn’t winning flashy, pretty, or even all that clean, but there were plenty of rounds that could be scored for Juan Carlos Abreu. With that said though, I also had no illusions that he stood a chance against the house fighter on these cards. Boxing rarely gives someone like him a fair shake in a fight like this. The scores came back 97-93, 97-93, and 96-94 and brought him the expected win, but Egidijus Kavaliauskas showed some real limitations to his game that he definitely needs to work on going forward. He did not react well to pressure, nor did he should the footwork to force Abreu into receiving his pressure when he did not want to.
Andy Vences Jr (21-0-1, 12 KOs) started the opener really well, landing two big right hands that visibly shook Frank De Alba (22-4-2, 9 KOs) over the first three minutes of the fight. Things slowed a bit in the second and third though. Vences was doing the better work still, but De Alba was mostly neutralizing basically any real fight from happening. The crowd booed in response. He came out with a big first two minutes in the fifth round, bothering De Alba with a series of big shots. He let off the gas though and the fight went back to its slower routine thereafter. By the eighth Vences had seemingly demoralized De Alba into near submission and sensing it he came out firing in the ninth to look for a finish. That doesn’t seem to be his natural temperament, however, and Vences always ends up backing off a little sooner than might be ideal. De Alba was tough in there too though. He took some punishment all night and then came out ripping and hurting Vences to the body in the tenth. The fight went the distance and I scored only the final round for De Alba, 99-91 for Andy Vences Jr. Two of the judges saw it that way while the third had it one round closer.
