For all it’s worth, nobody I knew except for myself and less than a hand-full of colleagues and readers gave Joseph “King Kong” Agbeko a puncher’s shot against Vic “The Raging Bull” Darchinyan tonight. Despite being the natural bantamweight and champion against a challenger moving up, nobody really took “King Kong” seriously.
And neither did his opponent last Saturday it seemed. Darchinyan was dishing out some serious smack talk over Agbeko even promising to turn him into a chimpanzee mocking his nick name as the baddest ape ever.
Boy did Agbeko dish out some humble pie tonight. You could say King Kong got them goin’ bananas last night. Instead of being renamed and reduced to being a chimp, Agbeko took care of the Armenian from Australia and suggested that his “Raging Bull” nick name be changed into the “Raging Bull Sh!t”. Agbeko got jokes too!
Agbeko controlled the highly-competitive fight all throughout and earned a uninamous decision. Scorecards were 116-111, 114-113 and 114-113 all in favor of Agbeko.
It was Agbeko’s second title defense of his IBF bantamweight belt. His record also imprved to 27-1.
Agbeko outboxed Darchinyan particularly in the first rounds. By all means was this fight a sight to behold as it featured a lot of grappling, shoving,pushing and all sorts of dirty tactics. Darchinyan sent Agbeko to the canvas in the 7th round with a right but after replays, it seemed more like Darchinyan grabbed him from the back of his neck and pushed him downward. It was ruled a knockdown though as Agbeko was given his standing 8-count.
Darchinyan was cut on his right eye and had a hard time adjusting to it and seemed to be growing more and more frustrated. In the 10th round his furstrations came to a head as he hurled Agbeko to the floor once again.
It was definitely a hard-fought and hard-earned victory for Agbeko. By virtue of beating one of the Pound-for-Pound best fighters in the sport and one of it’s more popular little men, surely bigger fights in the horizon await from the Ghana native.
All is not over for Darchinyan however. He can move back to the super flyweight division and re-establish himself the way he did after the first loss of his career against Nonito Donaire. At this moment though, a rematch with Donaire looks less appealing after the loss, but if Darchinyan’s camp had any sense in them, they’d know it’s one of the few interesting fights they can use as a bounce back fight for their ward- that is if Donaire is still interested. Knowing Darchinyan’s promoter Gary Shaw and his history with Donaire however, on top of the fact that his cash cow may not be so “cash” after the loss, that rematch might never happen anymore after all.
