|
Empire: 3, and its seven light-heavyweight fights, is in the books. The night was full of interesting bouts, each of which produced a clear winner. The first matchup was between the misspelled Micheal Turner and aptly named Joe Boxer. In a brawl between two very similar fighters, Boxer came out the gates stronger, scoring two takedowns in the first round, but Turner turned the tide in his favor by spending the vast majority of the last two rounds on top of Boxer and took an ugly match by unanimous decision.
The second fight was between Jerome Biggs and Yonnis Chico. Biggs dominated the first round, which was fought largely in the clinch, but the Mexican took Biggs down in the second round and finally forced Biggs into submission 4:56 into the second round. Yonnis Chico improved to 1-1-0, while the previously 2-0-0 Biggs lost his first career match. Biggs was dominating, but it only took one mistake to undo all the pointes he had scored.
The third matchup was where I believed the quality was supposed to take a turn for the worse, but I think that was more due to my overestimation of the first two matchups than my underestimation of the following fighters. In this one, it only took 3:30 for Mauricio Payne to put Wyane Green into a triangle in an otherwise dull fight. Apparently, Green got messed up so badly during the fight, he switched around the Y and A in his first name.
Next up was a fight between St. Louis native Jaco Camden and Dominican Eladio Chu. Both fighters were 0-1-0 entering the fight, but only Camden came out with a notch in the win column, putting Chu into submission with just 2 seconds left in the fight. While Chu may have been disappointed to tap out that close to going the distance, it would not have affected the final result, as anyone with eyes would have judged that for Camden in a landslide.
After that was another fight between an American and a foreign opponent, the fourth of the night, as Eddie Miles of Providence took on Iraqi Mahdi Dirjal. Miles came out swinging, and he only connected with a couple punches, but that was all it took, as he managed to score a KO on punches 1:57 into the match. Miles was so elated following his first ever win that he jumped out of the cage and almost forgot to serve his corporate overlords at Urban Fighter.
For the second time in a row, Santiago Munez failed to make weight for his match against Karl Van Horn. How one can fail to make weight once is absurd. How it can happen twice is baffling. Regardless, Van Horn remains 0-2-0 in his career.
In the second to last matchup, Januszov Goatov fought against Zivan Radosavjevic. Goatov repeatedly took his Serbian opponent to the mat, and after spending most of the match fishing for a submission, the Pole finally got one 3:32 into the second round. Goatov’s win was a dominant performance, and he left no doubt as to who the better Eastern European fighter for some reason stuck in New York is.
The main event featured the title fight between Hatebreed Rebel and Max Powers. This fight did not live up to the hype, as this one was fought mainly on the ground, but it still managed to go the distance. Rebel dominated the first three rounds, but Powers turned it around at the end of the match to make it appear competitive on the scorecards. In the end, it was a case of too little too late, as Rebel won 48:47 on all three scorecards to retain the belt by unanimous decision in a fight that was much more lopsided than the score may have suggested.
In the end, a card that looked like it had three good fights and five weaker ones only actually had seven fights, all of which sucked. I went 2-5 on my predictions (3-5 if you count me predicting Munez missing weight), but the real losers were those in attendance, as none of the fights held any entertainment value.
Article views:
59
» Donate to this author |
