A tired-looking cruiserweight Jake Paul (7-1, 4 KOs) labored to an unimpressive ten round unanimous decision victory over boxing newcomer Nate Diaz (0-1) in the headliner on Saturday night at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, Texas.
In the best round of the fight for Jake, he knocked the 38-year-old Nate down in round five and hit him with a storm of punches after he got back to his feet trying to score a knockout, which didn’t come.
The judges’ scores were 97-92, 98-91, and 98-91.
Jake looked strong in the first two rounds, connecting with big right hands & left hooks to the head of the much weaker, slower & far older 38-year-old Nate.
The punches didn’t have any effect on Nate, though, as he took them well and fired back with short MMA-like punches that had no power.
Diaz’s much better engine allowed him to take control of the fight beginning in the seventh, and he dominated Jake for the remainder of the fight. Jake came alive a little bit in the tenth, but for the most part, it was all Diaz outworking & outclassing him in the end.
Each round had an identical pattern: Jake would start strong, landing heavy punches in the first minute, then getting tired, and Diaz taking over the remainder of the round to get the better of the action.
The fight was held at a catchweight of 185 lbs rather than 200 lbs for the cruiserweight division, and it’s unclear if that played a part in why Jake looked so tired & sluggish during the fight.
Jake, 26, had talked about having made changes to his training team and made improvements over his previous fight, a loss to Tommy Fury, but tonight, he looked even worse than he did in that contest. You can only think that perhaps Jake was a little weight drained, or he overtrained.
All credit to my team and my conditioning for beating a UFC legend. I watched him on TV as a kid. I want to run it back in MMA,” said Jake after the fight.
“I’ll fight him in MMA – I’ll get a single leg and choke him out. I’ll fight anybody, I don’t give a f**k,” said Diaz.
Amanda Serrano defeats Heather Hardy
Amanda Serrano (45-2-1, 30 KOs) looked like gold tonight, successfully defending her undisputed female featherweight title with a ten round unanimous decision over the tough warrior Heather Hardy (24-3, 4 KOs) in the co-feature bout on the card.
The scores were 99-91, 100-90, and 100-90.
The 34-year-old Serrano’s speed advantage was the telling factor in making this a one-sided fight, as she was connecting with speedy combinations, and Hardy was slow to keep up with her.
Despite being badly overmatched & outgunned, Hardy didn’t give up and kept plodding forward the entire fight, walking through a firestorm of shots each time just to deliver one single, slow & weak punch.
By the seventh round, Hardy’s face looked unrecognizable to her appearance at the beginning of the fight. Her nose looked badly swollen, bleeding & perhaps broken, and her eyes and mouth looked in bad shape as well.
The referee Laurence Cole had Hardy looked over by the ringside doctor in the ninth due to the condition of her face. Surprisingly, she was allowed to continue, but no one would have complained had it been stopped.
Hardy was taking the kind of punishment that Errol Spence Jr took from Terence Crawford in the ninth round of their fight last weekend, and that contest was topped.
It looked like Serrano didn’t push for the knockout until the tenth round, as that’s when she really unloaded on Beaten up-looking 41-year-old Hardy, connecting with nonstop shots for the entire round.
Serrano easily beat Hardy in 2019 by a 10 round decision, but she gave her a rematch anyway. Hopefully, this is the last time the two fight each other because neither of their bouts were competitive. It’s disturbing to watch fights like this and not fun.