By Michael Collins: Juan Manuel Marquez (54-6-1, 39 KO’s) won the interim WBO light welterweight title on Saturday night with a wide 12 round unanimous decision victory over an over-matched out of his league #5 WBO contender Sergiy Fedchenko (30-2, 13 KO’s) at the New Mexico City Arena in Mexico City, Mexico. Fedchenko fought like he was there just to survive and knocked out.
Fedchenko fought conservatively, staying on the outside all night and mostly jabbing to keep from leaving openings for Marquez’s counter punching. With Fedchenko just looking to finish on his feet and nothing in his big career moment, Marquez was forced to take the fight to him and punish him with body and head shots.
Marquez fought especially well in the last three rounds of the fight from the 10th until the 12th, with Marquez teeing off on a battered Fedchenko. For his part, Fedechenko went into shutdown by the midpoint of the fight and did little more than land an occasional shot here and there while mostly just holding and backing away. It was really awful fight to watch because you expect a fighter to at least try to win when they’re in the biggest fight of their career, but Fedchenko did zero to try and make it a fight.
Marquez looked slower than he was in his last bout against WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao. It’s unclear why Marquez’s speed wasn’t there, as he was roughly the same size as he had been for that fight. But it didn’t really matter because he didn’t have anything to worry about with Fedchenko because he wasn’t fighting consistently and was more like a guy just running with his hands down by his sides trying not to get hit. It’s still hard to believe that guy is ranked #5 by the WBO. He looked pure 2nd tier to me.
Every round was basically the same with Marquez pressing the attacking going from body to head with uppercuts and hooks. Fedchenko was able to catch Marquez occasionally while he was coming in but it didn’t matter because he had no power and Marquez showed no signs of being hurt at any point in the fight. Marquez would land two to three shots before Fedchenko would scurry away to the outside. The process would then repeat with Marquez coming after Fedchenko and landing to the body and head. It was good stuff from Marquez. He had a purely defensive fighter in front of him and he still was able to dominate with no problems.
The judges scored the fight 119-109, 118-110 and 118-110. They must have given Fedchenko some mercy rounds because as far as I could see, Fedchenko came close to winning none of the rounds.
The victory for Marquez will set him up with a July 14th fight date at the Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas against either Mercito Gesta or Brandon Rios. It’s about the same for Marquez whoever he faces, because Rios is pretty limited and looks to be doing downhill as a fighter. He might be a little stronger at light welterweight than he was at lightweight, but Rios is still very one-dimensional and doesn’t seem to know how to fight. He showed no head movement, no jab and no ability to throw combinations in his gift 12 round split decision win over Richard Abril last night.
Marquez beats Rios with ease. I think Bob Arum shouldn’t make that fight, because Rios will look bad in losing and I think it will hurt his career, especially after the gift decision he got over Abril. Arum needs to spoon feed Rios to keep from getting beaten again like he was last night, because he’ll get clowned by Marquez. A fight between Marquez and Gesta, another one of Arum’s fighters, would be laughable. Gesta is going life and death with journeyman and has inflated record. It’s a nice stay busy fight for Marquez but that’s about. You can call it an exhibition fight or sparring match because Gesta stands no chance against Marquez. I don’t see where Gesta is going as a fighter. He looks like a fringe bottom 15 contender to me. It’s a pointless fight for Marquez, but he can think of it as an easy gym workout.
The worst part about Saturday’s fight HBO pay-per-view card was the high cost. The Marquez-Fedchenko, Brandon Rios vs. Richard Abril, Mercito Gesta vs. Oscar Cuero and Mike Alvarado vs. Mauricio Herrera was that it went for $44.95. There was only fight you could consider watching and that was the Alvarado-Herrera fight. The other bouts were one-sided affairs for the most part, including the Rios-Abril fight. That was a terrible a decision. Rios deserved to lose, and sadly two of the judges gave him the fight. For boxing fans to sit through three mismatches and then see the terrible scoring in the Rios vs. Abril fight, it was a bad night of boxing. And the thing is the card never promised to be an interesting card for fans because on paper only the Alvarado-Herrera fight was considered a competitive match-up. The rest of the fights were seen as mismatches.
In undercard action:
Saul Roman UD 10 Richard Gutierrez
Luis Vázquez SD 4 Alonso López
Shoky Sakai TKO 3 Alfonso Cibrián
Daniel Sandoval TKO 5 Michael Rosales