Last night in New York on the Lopez-Martin card, heavyweight prospect/contender Jared Anderson scored the most impressive win of his now 13-fight pro career in halting tough and durable veteran Jerry Forrest in just two rounds. After an exciting opening round, the 23 year old from Toledo, Ohio blasted the game Forrest with a right hand to the head in round two, the shot leaving Forrest out on his feet and buzzed in a major way. Third man David Fields had seen enough and he called it, the time being 1:34 of round 2. Anderson, now 13-0(13) became just the second man to stop Forrest, who falls to 26-6-2(20).
Going into last night’s fight, plenty of us felt “Slugger” Forrest would test Anderson, “take him into deep waters,” as Forrest said he would do to the man dubbed “Big Baby.” And Forrest went for it in the opening round, unloading shots, a couple of which landed. But Forrest’s left hand shots merely had the effect of making Anderson smile. And then fire back in kind. Already, referee Fields was having a close look at Forrest to see if he was hurt.
Then, in the second session, Anderson got the stoppage win statement he was looking for, this courtesy of his big right hand. Forrest – stopped only by Gerald Washington, this way back in 2013, since then going on to hold Zhilei Zhang and Michael Hunter to draws that could easily have gone Forrest’s way – found out up close and personal how good Anderson is. For some time now, fans, experts, pundits have been saying Anderson is the best young heavyweight out there today, and last night’s impressive performance will only have strengthened this opinion.
After his latest win, Anderson called out a number of fighters, including Daniel Dubois and Dillian Whyte (Anderson put out a tweet right after Whyte’s recent decision win over Jermain Franklin, with the words “feed me this bum” writ large) – and he also said that he “saw red” when Forrest tagged him.
“I try to come in cool, calm. I see everybody was kind of expecting him to go out early. I didn’t want that,” Anderson said post-fight. “But once he did hit me, something flipped. And just all I saw was red, so the 114 punches (thrown by Anderson in the opening round) came and we picked it up.”
Anderson sure did pick it up, in doing so picking up his best win to date. It will be most interesting seeing who Anderson fights next. But, as the saying goes these days, who will want the smoke?