The trash-talking was impressive. The pre-fight hype was intense. The fight, however, was largely underwhelming.
At the end of 12 rounds where both fighters did not even land a combined 100 punches, John Riel Casimero of the Philippines retained his World Boxing Organization bantamweight title with a split decision victory against Cuban Guillermo Rigondeaux.
Two judges scored the fight for the defending champion 116-112 and 117-111 while one judge had it 115-113 for Rigondeaux.
The final punch statistics just showed the lack of action in the match as Rigondeaux landed only 44 of 221 and while Casimero did not do much better with 47 of 297.
“I was excited because he’s a good fighter and he’s said he was not going to run,” Casimero said after the match. “I was focused on getting the knockout but Rigondeaux but he just kept on running.”
“Nobody wants to fight with me because that’s my game plan,” said Rigondeaux. Asked why he only landed 44 punches, the Cuban said, “That’s the necessary amount of punches that I needed to win this fight.”
Rigondeaux started the match moving towards his right to avoid Casimero’s power. The Filipino landed a short right straight in the final minute of the first round that sent the Cuban down but referee Jerry Cantu deemed it a slip.
Casimero was also warned for landing several blows to the head of Rigondeaux while his gloves were already on the canvas.
The Cuban had a much better second round as he continued to circle away from Casimero’s power while landing a couple of good left straights.
The third and fourth rounds played out very similarly with Rigondeaux barely threw punches while getting on his bike.
Casimero altered his strategy in the fifth to seventh rounds as he started investing on the left hook and right straight to the body, an easier target compared to the Cuban’s head. However, neither fighter was able to land anything meaningful in the middle rounds, which started to frustrate the fans in attendance.
The defending champion tried his best to up the aggression in the ninth round as it wasn’t clear how the judges were scoring the fight.
The action did not pick up in the championship rounds either with Rigondeaux choosing to not engage and pick his spots from the outside while Casimero missed wildly in an attempt to force the issue.
The next targets for the Casimero will be the two top names of the bantamweight division in unified World Boxing Association and International Boxing Federation champion Naoya Inoue or World Boxing Council king Nonito Donaire. Those two might be angling for a rematch so Casimero might just have to wait for a shot at all the championships in the division.
In the undercard, Rau’shee Warren defeated Damien Vazquez via stoppage in the second round. The co-main event Gary Antonio Russell and Emmanuel Rodriguez fought for only 16 seconds as a nasty head-butt caused an injury to the nose of the latter for a no-decision.
Prior to the broadcast, former world title challenger Jonas Sultan (17-5-0, 11 KOs), the last fighter to beat Casimero, ended his two-year hiatus with a seventh-round knockout against Sharone Carter (12-5-0, 3 KOs).
