McDonnell defeats Ceja

By Michael Collins - 05/11/2013 - Comments

Using movement, a nice jab and some skillful roughhouse tactics, bantamweight contender Jaime McDonnell (21-2-1, 9 KO’s) defeated Julio Ceja (24-1, 22 KO) tonight by a 12 round unanimous decision to win the vacant International Boxing Federation (IBF) bantamweight ttile at the Keepmoat Stadium, in Doncaster, United Kingdom.

The final judges’ scores were 114-114, 115-113, 118-110. The first two scores seem pretty fair but the last one didn’t reflect what happened in the ring tonight between these competitors. That’s a score that makes you wonder about what that judge was watching because there’s no way McDonnell dominated the fight by an 118-110 score.

I had Ceja winning rounds 2, 3, 10 and 11. Rounds 1 and 12 were toss-up rounds and hard to score. McDonnell was mostly fighting defensive in the 12th, ramming Ceja with his head over and over again, and pulling him down on his head. McDonnell just looked like he was stalling after having been shook up from a right hand in the 11th.

It was far from an easy win for the taller McDonnell, as he was hurt in the 11th and he had to move without stop in order to keep from getting blasted out by the younger, stronger Ceja. However, in the end, Ceja couldn’t cut off the ring to force McDonnell to brawl like he wanted to in each round. McDonnell’s long reach gave Ceja fits, as he was getting hit a while coming in.

Ceja didn’t help himself any by not fighting with the kind of urgency that he needed to from the start of the fight. He was too relaxed and not throwing shots in a rapid enough manner to win. Part of the blame may be from the weak opposition he’d faced up until this point in his career. He seems to have gotten used to hitting guys with one shot and watching them topple over. That wasn’t going to happen tonight and he should figured out early that he was going to need to up his punch output to beat McDonnell.

Ceja needs a lot of work on his game if he ever wants to become a world champion. He doesn’t have the defensive skills needed for him to be able to make it to the top and his power isn’t devastating enough for him to walk through guys like McDonnell.

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