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‘Mighty’ Mark Melligen just didn’t look the same tonight as he fell by way of 9th round upset KO to crafty Argentinean Sebastian Lujan inside of the Freeman Coliseum in San Antonio, Texas. From the minute the fight was announced I didn’t have the best of feelings but still felt that Melligen’s youth and activity would prevail.
I was proved wrong in dramatic fashion.
In the early rounds things looked good for Melligen and he felt Lujan out by tagging him to the body and taking a slight command in the action. Lujan, who is known best for his bloody TKO loss to Antonio Margarito years back, stayed calm and began working his way back in the 4th round, turning the tide of the fight and even stunning his 25-year old foe along the ropes.
Melligen attempted to rebound in the fifth and drew some applause for an uppercut after the bell that sent Lujan’s head back. The Argentinean motioned to the referee that the act was uncalled for and had ideas of revenge in mind for the coming rounds.
From round six on it was a Lujan show, as he mocked Melligen constantly and began inflicting serious damage by touching him with right hands. The southpaw from Bacolod City in the Philippines would taste canvas in the sixth, seventh, eighth, and for the last time in the ninth round as the fight was waived off with Melligen lying on his back.
While Lujan is a durable and tricky opponent, it is still hard to fathom how things went wrong for Melligen tonight. He had a solid 2010 campaign that saw him go undefeated and carried that momentum over into his last fight, a decision victory over Gabriel Martinez at the Mandalay Bay underneath Nonito Donaire’s crushing TKO over Fernando Montiel. Advertisement
Against Lujan he looked solid early but was gassed past round five and didn’t seem to be fully focused inside of the ring. Melligen, who does his core training out of Floyd Mayweather’s personal gym in Las Vegas, arrived to camp in the middle of June and had only a few weeks of solid training in Vegas before venturing out to Texas.
That may explain a few things and Melligen also may not have been expecting such a fight from Lujan, who came in as a late replacement on eight days notice after former title challenger Freddy Hernandez suffered a cut in training.
Still, this doesn’t necessarily mean the end of the round for Melligen. He still has youth on his side but would be better served by getting a full month’s worth of training in Nevada in for his upcoming duels.
No matter how you cut it, it’s a tough loss to swallow, but I don’t think we’ve seen the last of Mark Melligen.
Chris Robinson is based out of Las Vegas, Nevada. He can be reached at [email protected]
