Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City, N.J. – For the WBC featherweight championship, undefeated mandatory challenger Mark Magsayo (24-0, 16 KOs) pulled off a major upset with a twelve round majority decision over Gary Russell Jr. (31-2-1, 18 KOs), who seemed to have a right shoulder injury and was coming off a near two-year layoff.
The scores were 114-114, 115-113, 115-113 for Magsayo.
Russell was boxing’s longest reigning world champion.
Russell came out using his quick hands and jabbing, as Magsayo was coming at him. Magsayo looked like a much bigger fighter. Magsayo was doing well with his power punches. Magsayo started the second with more of his heavy shots. He was countering well on Russell with lefts and uppercuts.
Magsayo continued to do well in the third, as he was outlanding and outworking Russell. During the fourth, Russell seemed to hurt his right shoulder and Magsayo jumped on him with punches. Russell was able to recover and began landing some decent left hands over and over. In the fifth, Russell was mostly using his left hand and timing Magsayo when he came in. The right hand jab of Russell was abandoned at this point due to injury it appeared.
Magsayo was picking up the volume of punches in the sixth, but Russell was still making it tough to connect flush. In the seventh, Magsayo was missing a lot of his punches, with Russell landing left hand counters. It was the same in the eight, with Russell able to hold off Magsayo with just the left hand. In the ninth, Russell continued to land left as Magsayo was going after him and throwing some wild punches.
Magsayo was coming forward and pushing the pace in the tenth as he started throwing more punches. Russell was not doing too much in return. During the eleventh, Magsayo continued to pour on the punches as he pressed the action and was making Russell move around the ring without throwing much. In the twelfth and final round, Magsayo went right after Russell with a high volume of punches. Russell was landing his left hands in spots to make the round very close.
