The Miracle Man earned the IBF belt in an excellent fight.
It briefly looked like to might be a quick night for Danny Jacobs (35-2, 29 KOs) when a sharp right hand put down Sergiy Derevyanchenko (12-1, 10 KOs) at the end of the first round. “The Technician” wasn’t extremely badly hurt and there was only a few seconds left in the round, but it was a statement that “The Miracle Man” had the power to hurt Derevyanchenko for sure. Unfortunately for Jacobs, however, the tables turned in the second. Danny didn’t go down, but he was hurt by a straight shot coming back. It was a reality check that the Brooklyn favorite wasn’t in for an easy night for sure.
From there the fight somehow only became more entertaining. With the upper hand for the moment, the Ukrainian charged out to an aggressive third. Jacobs had to stay on the back foot the whole round. He reasserted himself in the fourth, however, and the fight really escalated with a fierce give and take at the end of the three minutes. The back and forth nature continued into the fifth. Sergiy had a sharp, excellent round after Jacob’s solid fourth.
The fight’s middle rounds probably won the contest for The Miracle Man. Each and every round remained competitive, but there was just sort of this sense that he consistently was the slightly better fight. Derevyancheko was limited to more straight line work. Jacobs could throw those shots, but hooks too. When Sergiy went to the body, Danny did it with a little more intensity. The Matchroom fighter took three of the next four rounds on my card to begin to pull away a little bit.
The Technician gave a worthy close to a really good fight over the last three rounds though. Danny might have taken the tenth off and Sergiy popped him with several clean shots. Emboldened, the PBC middleweight charged out in the eleventh for a fierce first two minutes. He looked to be on his way to an important late round win, but then he sort of slowed down over the last minute and ate some really big shots in return. That last minute made the eleventh very close. Derevyanchenko clearly won the twelfth and final round though. In fact, it may have been the best of the fight for the Ukrainian former amateur standout. He managed to keep his aggression up for most of the three minutes as he seemed to search for the finish. He landed many clean blows too, but he couldn’t find the one to get the job done. Danny took them well.
In the end I scored the excellent fight 114-113 for Danny Jacobs on the strength of his first round knockdown. The first official score read was the same, but in the opposite direction in favor of Sergiy Derevyanchenko. That card was overruled by a pair of 115-112s in favor of The Miracle Man. Daniel Jacobs is the new IBF middleweight titleholder. Those were very reasonable cards.
Post-fight Danny was very classy in giving a lot of credit to Derevyanchenko. He also made it clear his priority was fighting the other titleholders, preferably Canelo. With Andrade’s WBO title and Canelo’s two belts to go along with Danny’s shiny new trinket, all four titles are signed to DAZN going forward. Hopefully we have a unified division by the end of 2019.
