IBF super featherweight championship Argenis Mendez (21-3-1, 11 KOs) lost his title in controversial fashion to Rances Barthelemy (20-0, 13 KOs)…
Friday night at the Target Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the 2014 boxing season got underway on ESPN2 with a bang followed by a whimper.
In the main event, IBF super featherweight championship Argenis Mendez (21-3-1, 11 KOs), from Brooklyn by way of San Juan de la Maguana, Dominican Republic, lost his title in controversial fashion to Rances Barthelemy (20-0, 13 KOs), from Miami via Arroyo Naranjo, Cuba, by a second-round knockout.
The undefeated Barthelemy established his superiority right out of the gate. He rocked Mendez with an uppercut followed by a double left hook less than a minute in and dazed the Dominican again before the round ended. Mendez?s slow start may have been strategic. But more likely, Barthelemy had Mendez?s number. He landed 20 punches to 3 for Mendez in the opening stanza.
Barthelemy dropped Mendez in the second with another double left hook. It was the first time Mendez was on the canvas. It would not be the last. As the round wound down, Barthelemy landed another left that shook his opponent. Then the bell sounded?at which point a one-two knocked Mendez down and out for good.
The referee, the usually reliable Pete Podgorski, wasn?t in position to jump between the two fighters. If he had been in position, he might have been knocked down and out as well. As it was, that ignominy fell to Mendez. Podgorski, by contrast, simply felt the heat.
The official time of the stoppage was 2:59.
Mendez?s promoter, Mike Tyson of Iron Mike Productions, plans to lodge a complaint with the IBF.
?We?re going after the rematch,? said Tyson, looking and sounding like every promoter since the beginning of time. ?Rances is a great fighter, there?s no doubt about it. But [my fighter] was hit after the bell.?
In the post-fight interview, Barthelemy was more than willing to grant Tyson his wish.
?I would be happy to give him a rematch,? he said. ?I want to fight the best. It doesn?t matter who it is.?
In the co-main, local sensation Caleb Truax (23-1-1, 14 KOs) looked less than sensational fighting 36-year-old Ossie Duran (28-11-3, 11 KOs), a Ghanaian fighting out of Paterson, New Jersey, to a draw after 10 rounds.
Truax got off a slow start. Duran, a late replacement for Derek Ennis, wasn?t as shopworn as advertised and used his experience and fists to bust Caleb?s nose in the early going.
The Minnesota native was more effective in the second half of the fight. He put his punches together and evened the score as the fight drew to a close, even though Duran managed to steal a couple more rounds.
When the decision was announced as a draw, the partisan crowd, dismissive of the verdict, erupted with a chorus of boos.
