The favorites cruised in the UK.
Pound for pound king Vasyl Lomachenko has a new mandatory challenger in the former of former titleholder Anthony Crolla (34-6-3, 13 KOs). The Manchester native picked up a competitive but clear unanimous decision win over Daud Yordan (38-4, 26 KOs) at home as the cruiserweight championship’s co-main event. Crolla started strong by banking most of the early rounds with clean punches, but Yordan was there every step up the way fighting back. The majority of the rounds followed the blueprint of Crolla landing the more consistently clean work among all the pressure and less accurate shots coming back his way. It was a watchable fight for all the activity too. I scored it 117-111 for Crolla and the official cards came back 116-112 across the board.
Scorecards weren’t needed in the case of former three division titleholder Ricky Burns’s (47-3-1, 15 KOs) three round blowout of domestic level foe Scott Cardle (23-3-1, 7 KOs). After two rounds in which it looked like “The Rickster” was going to cruise to the same Ricky Burns decision we’ve seen thirty or so times at this point, the 34 year old ripped off a brutal one two that froze Cardle’s legs. He went down in highlight reel fashion. The underdog rose, but the fight was rightfully waved off.
Blue chip welterweight prospect Josh Kelly (8-0, 6 KOs) also picked up a finish on the show. His was more record building nonsense than a competitive fight though. Walter Castillo (13-3, 3 KOs) was grossling and intentionally overmatched in there. He was stung repeatedly by Kelly and the fight was stopped along the ropes late in the round. It was a strange stoppage actually given that Castillo was fighting back at the moment, but I guess there isn’t much point to hiding the fact that Hearn and company are looking to have him back for a step up in a month.
