Boxing

 

Candelo Outpoints Hernandez to Win NABF Jr. Middleweight Title

By Kent Appel

The Pechanga Resort and Casino in Temecula, California was the scene of an excellent boxing card this past Friday night, December 13, 2002. The event, which was promoted by Goosen Tutor Promotions, featured several exciting matches.

The main event featured J.C. Candelo of Denver, Colorado verses Angel Hernandez of Chicago, Illinois for the NABF Jr. middleweight championship and Candelo won by unanimous decision. The fight was a rematch of an exciting fight that took place this past January that was won by Hernandez. The judges' scores were as follows: 116 to 112, 117 to 111, and 117 to 111. Candelo, who weighed in at 153 ½ pounds, improves his record to 25-4-3,17 by KO while Hernandez falls to 24-3, 15 by KO. Hernandez weighed the division limit of 154 pounds.

I felt the fight was much closer than this, and I in fact scored the fight a draw, but if I had to pick a winner, I would say Hernandez might have had a slight advantage because he aggressively pressed the action throughout the fight. Initially, just after the fight, I added my scorecard and it totaled 115 to 114 in favor of Hernandez but, when I got home to write this article, I re-added my score and I found I had made an error in my calculations, thus my revised score of a draw.

On the subject of scoring a fight, a person can try to be as objective as he can be but it is still a subjective opinion. This is the reason that I don't look at the judges’ scores as being too outlandish as other reporters around me at the press table agreed that Candelo had won the fight. I do think that even those who disagreed with me that there was a winner thought it was closer than the judges scores indicated.

I do apologize for raining on Mr. Candelo's victory parade because I might have softened my words somewhat when I spoke to him in the dressing room after the fight. I had went back there after I hastily added up my scorecard, with the opinion that Hernandez had won by one point and I asked Candelo if he thought the fight was closer than the judges scorecards showed and if Hernandez was as tough in the ring as he appeared to be from my seat. But I should have left out the part that I thought Hernandez had won, even if ever so slightly. Mr. Candelo angrily told me, "you didn't see the fight I just fought and I will not answer any more of your questions."

I am not taking back how I feel the fight went, but maybe I could have just kept those thoughts to the confines of this article. I can see how he could think I was taking a cheap shot, which is something that I never do to any athlete. I know there are other writers out there who actually try, for selfish reasons, to take an athlete down a notch or two. Oh well, I guess I learn something everyday. I will know next time to choose my words more carefully.

Now on to the action of one of the best fights I have seen in quite a while: There was not much action in round one but I gave the nod to Candelo because he landed the more effective blows, including two hard straight right hands and a right uppercut in the middle of the round. The action heated up in rounds two and three and Hernandez was the busier of the two fighters in these rounds, scoring with some good body shots and combinations to the head. The action slowed somewhat in round four and I saw Candelo as the winner of this round based on his effective use of the left jab.

Candelo continued his advantage in round five by scoring with effective left jabs from a distance early in the round and with good two hand combinations near the end of the round. The pace of the action went up a notch again in round six, and there were some good exchanges between the two fighters, but Hernandez had the edge because he landed the harder shots. Round seven showed Candelo reasserting his excellent left jab to keep his distance from Hernandez and he continued this tactic in the next round. I felt he had his best round of the fight in round eight by effectively using right leads, right uppercuts, and left/right combinations whenever Hernandez got within striking distance.

Candelo boxed well from a distance in the first half of round nine but Hernandez stormed back in the second half of the round by landing some hard right hands and some hard two and three punch combinations to the head to win the round on my card. Neither fighter gave ground in round ten and both of them landed some very hard shots, but Hernandez again had an ever so slight advantage during the in fighting. They traded evenly in round eleven and I was about to score this round even but Hernandez landed a hard left hand late in the round that appeared to hurt Candelo, driving him into the ropes. This may have been Hernandez’s best punch of the fight and I felt it pulled out the round for him. Candelo boxed well behind his left jab in the twelfth and final round and while Hernandez continued to try and force the action, Hernandez seemed to run out of steam after all of the effort he had put out throughout the rest of the fight.

What is next for these two fighters? Candelo is headed for a probable match up with IBF Jr. middleweight champion Ronald “Winky” Wright in March, 2003 and he deserves his title shot. But so does Hernandez, who fought his heart out. I would like to see a rematch to settle the score as Hernandez won their first fight and Candelo was the winner of this second fight. It will be an even more important bout if Candelo is successful in dethroning Wright for the title. It can't help to be another excellent fight between two evenly matched fighters.

In the CO feature bout, in a featherweight contest scheduled for ten rounds, Art Simonyan of Glendale, California weighing in at 124 ½ pounds defeated Radford Beasley of St. Louis, Missouri who weighed in at 126 ¾ pounds by a seventh round TKO when the fight was stopped after the round on the advice of the ringside doctor due to a severe cut on the right eye of Beasley.

Simonyan, who himself was cut on the left forehead by an accidental butt in the third round, and also cut below the right eye in the sixth round, used strong left hook leads, a punch I haven't seen much before, in the first three rounds and some excellent right leads in the fourth, fifth, and sixth rounds to dominate the action. Beasley was very game, and he did land effective jabs and right hands throughout the bout, but he was out-landed by Simonyan in every round. Simonyan is now 11-0-1, 5 by KO while Beasley slips to 21-2, 14 by KO.

In other action: In a four round heavyweight bout, 2002 Golden Gloves national champion Malcolm Tann of Seaboard, North Carolina overcame a spirited performance by Lisandro Diaz of Los Angeles, California to win a unanimous decision. Tann, 232 pounds, is now 2-0, 1 by KO while Diaz, also 232 pounds, goes to 3-2-1 3 by KO. In a 6 round bantamweight bout, Valdemir Dos Santos Pereira of San Paulo, Brazil won by unanimous decision over Marcos Badillo of Mexico City, Mexico. Pereira, who weighed 123 ½ pounds improves to 12-0, 10 by KO while Badillo, 125 pounds, is now 16-25-1, 6 by KO. In a six round lightweight fight, Juliano Ramos, 139 pounds of San Paulo, Brazil knocked out Luis Russo Montes of Los Moches, Mexico, 139 pounds, at 2:32 of the first round. Ramos is now 9-0, 8 by KO while Montes falls to 12-50-1, 8 by KO. In a bantamweight bout, Rudy Dominguez, 122½ pounds of Coachella, California defeated Nestor Hugo Paniagua, 122 ½ pounds of Los Angeles, California by unanimous decision. Dominguez is now 7-0, 2 by KO while Paniagua falls to 6-1-1, 5 by KO. Finally, in a six round women's flyweight bout, Anastasia Touktalova of Moscow, Russia defeated Mary Duron of Riverside, California by unanimous decision. Touktalova improves to 8-5, 0 by KO while Duron goes to 4-4-1, 0 by KO.

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