07.05.06 – By Izyaslav “Slava” Koza: After a late night viewing of the Showtime fight card, it is brutally and blatantly obvious that we should have had two new champions crowned tonight. Unfortunately, only Jose Antonio Rivera, fueled by five knockdowns of his opponent, and former champ, Alex Garcia, was able to raise his hands and the championship belt. To me, the disappointment was twofold, seeing as, one, I was cheering for Kirrilov, and two, I at least have some idea of how to score a damn fight.
In boxing, the scoring criteria are obvious and it is up to the judges to either take them into account or consider whatever the hell they want to give whoever they want the fight. Clean effective punching, is criteria numero uno, and each round had instances of Kirrilov’s thorough punching on display. To add to that, consider both ring generalship, and defense, where not only did Kirrilov force Luis Perez to follow him all around the ring, but made him miss an astonishingly obscene amount of punches. This is one fight where I would have loved to see the disparity in punches thrown and NOT landed for Perez as counted by compubox. This fight was like a smaller version of Toney Ruiz, where it was obvious who to give the rounds to because, there as here, the smaller guy, was landing shots that were right on the money and hard enough to consider no matter what side of the ring the judge was sitting on.
The fact of it was, Kirrilov was much, much faster in terms of handspeed, and was landing at will whenever he needed to open up. Perez, for his part, was determined the whole way, partly and probably, because his opponent’s power was not “discouraging,” but he had no clue how to land the same clean shots as his faster opponent. Mainly his offense consisted of, glancing blows, or shots to the arms of Kirrilov, or half illegal holding and hitting combinations. There is something to that as always seeing as if you can’t win by the rules then you have to break them, even at the cost of a DQ or boos, to succeed and move on, but still even those dirty tactics were not enough to bank rounds.
Even the single round where Perez had success, landing a pretty right hook that sent the Russian to the canvas, was in my opinion arguably not his by the score of 10-8. Kirrilov after getting up landed some terrific shots in response and it could be argued the round was 10-9 for Perez or possibly even. The rest of the rounds were simply a matter of how confidently you gave them to Kirrilov. I can understand, possibly two or three, being given in mercy to the Nicaraguan but even so that is more pity then actual effectiveness. I know it might seem like bias, but each round it was obvious who landed the cleaner harder blows, and it is a shame that the judges did not pay attention to the fight.
After the bout, Kirrilov was visibly upset both by the fact that he was robbed and probably by his inability to fulfill the promise of becoming champ to his deceased first coach Igor Lebedev. Both he and current IBF Jr Middle champ Karmazin made the promise to Lebedev and unfortunately though they did what was needed to be done, in Kirrilov’s case the judges stopped him on his feet after the final bell sounded. Though, Perez admirably promised him a rematch, as I guess he should have, the problem is no man should have to fight again to prove what he accomplished the first time.
Congratulations to Dimitri Kirrilov for becoming the true champion, regardless of what the judges thought.