By Michael Collins: Rather than taking on a higher ranked and arguably better quality fighter for his third defense of his World Boxing Organization 160 pound title, WBO middleweight champion Dmitry Pirog (20-0, 15 KO’s) chose another soft touch in 36-year-old, #11 WBO, Nobuhiro Ishida (24-8-2, 9 KO”s), beating him by an easy 12 round unanimous decision on Saturday night at the Sport Complex Krylatskoe, Moscow, Russia. The final judges’ scores for this mismatch were 119-109, 120-108, and 117-111.
Pirog had his way with the light hitting Ishida, dominating each round with his harder shots. Ishida was able to land a lot of punches and bruise Pirog’s right eye, but he lacked power in his shots.
Pirog dominated rounds one through four with his constant incoming fire. Ishida, to his credit, did the best he could to try and match him but again, he lacked the power to do anything when he did land. Pirog, a skinny 5’11” middleweight, doesn’t have the size of bigger middleweights like Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. nor the same kind of power of the stronger guys like Sergio Martinez. Instead of being able to overwhelm Ishida with his size or power, Pirog had to beat him by out-working him. Ishida was able to land a lot of his own shots because of Pirog’s lack of power and it made the one-sided dull fight slightly interesting. But all in all, it was incredibly boring and quite sad to see such a mismatch after all the other mismatches Pirog has been in since he won the WBO title.
What made this such a poor choice of an opponent for Pirog was that Ishida was coming off of a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision loss to Paul Williams last February in a fight where Ishida lost every round in the fight. It’s a rarity for fighters to be given title shots off of losses like the one that Ishida suffered against Williams, and it’s off putting to say the least. It wouldn’t be a big deal if this fight was coming off of a string of fights where Pirog had fought some big named quality opposition, but that’s not been the case since he captured the WBO title in July 2010. Since winning the fight, Pirog has beaten little known Javier Francisco Maciel and Gennady Matirosyan. Why Pirog isn’t fighting better opposition is the big question. If he wants bigger fights, he’s going about it the wrong way by facing easier options rather than guys that can build his name up. Of course, Pirog could lose if he faces better opponents, so maybe he’s better off facing guys like Ishida each time he defends his title. He’ll hold onto it a lot longer that’s for sure.
In other action on the card:
Vyacheslav Glazkov TKO 10 Gbenga Oloukun
Dmitry Kudryashov TKO 1 Oleksiy Varagushyn
Maxim Chemezov MD 4 Sergey Akimov
Dmitry Kadeykin UD 4 Fuad Muradov