Richardson Hitchins (17-0, 7 KOs) had his coming out party on Saturday night, beating the experienced Jose Zepeda (37-4, 28 KOs) by a twelve round unanimous decision in a defensive masterclass performance in light welterweight action at the Caribe Royale in Orlando, Florida.
Zepeda looked completely dejected by the sixth round, like he’d given up on himself because he couldn’t land his power punches against Hitchins, who saw shots coming and could avoid them.
The scores: 120-108, 120-108, and 119-109.
After the fight, the 25-year-old Hitchins admitted that he wasn’t happy with his performance, giving himself a nine on a ten scale. He felt that he should have let his hands go more and taken more chances.
Hitchins says that Zepeda hit too hard and was looking to set him up with something. By the way, Hitchins was talking; he didn’t have a lot of confidence in his chin, and he may be been hurt during sparring sessions and during his amateur. Hitchins didn’t want to take risks.
Eddie Hearn recently signed Hitchins, and he sees him becoming a superstar soon and capturing world titles at 140.
What we saw tonight is Hitchins is still a work in progress and will need to watch the more entertaining fighters lat 140, like Subriel Matias & Gary Antuanne Russell, and pattern his fighting style after them if he wants to become a superstar & PPV guy.
If Hitchins continues to fight the way he did tonight, he’s not going to become a PPV attraction, and he won’t become a superstar.
Conor Benn beats Rodolfo Orozco:
Fighting in the junior middleweight division, Conor Benn (22-0, 14 KOs) looked like a chip off the old block, showing glimpses of his famous dad Nigel Benn, beating a game but limited Rodolfo Orozco (32-4-3, 24 KOs) by a ten round unanimous decision in the co-feature bout.
Benn, 26, hit Orozco with many shots that would have knocked out most welterweights, but with him being a junior middleweight, the punches didn’t have as much effect on him.
At the same time, Benn didn’t look comfortable getting hit a lot by Orozco, so he got on his bike and moved a lot when the knockout failed to happen after the third round.
The judge scores were 99-91, 99-91, and 96-94.
Benn now intends on going up to 160 to fight middleweight Chris Eubank Jr. in a money fight on PPV. After this fight, Benn will probably return to 147.
Returning to 154 would be a mistake for Benn unless he just wants to get a big payday fighting Terence Crawford or Errol Spence. The 147-lb is lacking in big names right now, so it might not be worth it for Benn to fight in that weight class.
