Instant Classic As Sergio Martinez Re-captures The WBC Middleweight Title.
Saturday Night, all eyes in the boxing world were on the biggest fight of the night (for middleweight title) as current then champion, Julio César Chávez, Jr. faced challenger Sergio Martínez. The crowd of nearly 20,000 at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas, NV had beoame restless for most of the under-card but were treated to arguably the best fight of the night. Before hand, Martínez had promised to pound Chavez Jr. the entire fight, then proceed with a knockout but somewhere in rounds 10-12, he lost his focus.
Through round 5, the fight was about even in my opinion, with the edge slightly towards Martinez but in rounds 6 throughout round 9 we would see pure dominance from Martinez taking an 7 point lead in the score card at 89-82. This caused Martinez to put put his guard down instead of finishing the fight which led to the emergence of Chavez Jr. returning back to fight form with landing significant punches from the 10th round on.
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In the 11th round, the large crowd at UNLV gave Chavez Jr. more energy to feed off of to get back into the fight and did so as things intensified with Chavez shaking off every punch Martinez threw in the round that he won. In the final round, Julio landed a hard-left-right-left combo to knock Martinez down which surprised the whole crowd in attendance, but Martinez’s toughness showed as he got up by the eighth count.
Martinez would get knocked down again by a right but would only rise again after surviving holding onto to Chavez after sustaining multiple right and left combos. The bell rung and the judges scored Martinez the winner and new WBC middleweight champion giving Chavez Jr. his first ever career loss in a 118-109 unanimous decision. This fight definitely deserves a rematch as I’m sure most of the boxing community, like myself, would have no problem forking up the money pending a better under-card.