Ancajas defeats Kinoshita; Conlan beats Owen

Boxingnews24.com

By Jim Dower: IBF World super flyweight champion Jerwin Ancajas (27-1-1, 18 KOs) defeated #3 IBF Teiru Kinoshita (25-2-1, 8 KOs) in the 7th round on Saturday night on ESPN Boxing from the Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane, Australia.

Ancajas hit Kinashita with a hard right hand to the body in the 7th round that send him down on the canvas on all fours.

Kinoshita made it back to his feet, but the referee decided to halt the fight. It’s likely that he didn’t like the look of Kinoshita’s cut right eye, which looked bad. Referee Ignatius Massalidis officially halted the fight at 1:53 of round 7.

Kinoshita was cut in round 2 over his right eye in what appeared to be an elbow. The referee ruled it as a legitimate punch unfortunately for Kinoshita. However, he was struggling even before the cut due to Ancajas’s punching power and superior inside game.

The 5’7” Kinoshita made the mistake of giving up his one inch height advantage over Ancajas by choosing to fight in close much of the time, which made it easy for the 25-year-old Ancajas to hit him with his big power shots.

The win for Ancajas was his second successful title defense since winning the belt last year in September in besting McJoe Arroyo.

Ancajas looks like the real deal at this point. It would be fun to see Ancajas face the likes of Carlos Cuadras, Naoya Inoue, Roman Gonzalez, Srisaket Sor Runvisai and Khalid Yafai. Those are the best fighters in the super flyweight division. Ancajas needs to throw his hat in the ring to get in on some of the action in fighting those big names. It would help Ancajas achieve a name if he could fight those guys and beat them. Right now, Ancajas doesn’t get a lot of attention from the boxing world even though he’s clearly a very talented fighter. If Top Rank can continue to put Ancajas’s fights on ESPN, he could make a name for himself.

2016 Irish Olympian Michael Conlan (3-0, 3 KOs) stayed unbeaten with a 3rd round knockout win over journeyman Jarrett Owen (5-5-3, 2 KOs) in featherweight action.

Conlan hurt the 31-year0-old Owen with body shots in round 3. Conlan than teed off on Owen until the referee Tony Kettlewell stepped in and stopped the fight. Owen was still on his feet, but hurt and unable to defend himself. The official time of the stoppage was at 1:55 of round 3.

Conlan, 25, showed zero respect for the punching power of Owen. Conlan was all over Owen from the opening bell in round 1, hitting him with big power shots to the head and body. Owen took the punches surprisingly well and fired back with a lot of his own shots. Conlan found himself getting hit, and he looked more than a little frustrated that he couldn’t knockout Owen quickly. Owen had been topped in the past by arguably lesser fighters than Conlan.

Conlan is going to need to work on his punching power if he wants to compete with the beast at 122 and 126. The way Conlan looked tonight, he would have been in serious trouble if he’d been in with the likes of Guillermo Rigondeaux, Gary Russell Jr., Leo Santa Cruz or Oscar Valdez. There’s a wide gulf between those fighters and Conlan right now.

Undefeated middleweight prospect David Toussaint (11-0, 11 KOs) stayed unbeaten with an 8 round split decision victory over Shane Mosley Jr. (10-2, 7 KOs). The judges scored the fight 77-76, 77-76 for Toussaint, and 77-75 for Mosley Jr. Boxing News 24 scored the fight 77-76 for Toussaint. It was a fight that was there to be won by Mosley Jr. if he had made a few moves to keep from getting hit so much. Mosley Jr. was easy target for most of Toussaint’s shots throughout the fight.

Toussaint was cut over the bridge of his nose in round 2. The cut bled all fight long. Mosley Jr’s face was reddened from the many shots he was hit with.

The southpaw Toussaint was able to catch the 6’1” Mosley Jr. repeatedly with his power shots in every round. Mosley Jr., the son of former world champion “Sugar” Shane Mosley, failed to use any head movement to avoid the punches from the hard hitting Toussaint. Mosley Jr. was walking forward in straight up position and not crouching down. He was an easy target for Toussaint to nail with shots.

Mosley Jr. began to crowd Toussaint in the 7th round tin a move to keep from getting hit as much. It worked somewhat in limiting the big shots he was getting hit with. Mosley Jr. still ended up getting hit a lot. Mosley Jr. did his best work in the second half of the fight. He did a good job of taking the fight to Toussaint in the last 3 rounds. If Mosley Jr. had started to attack Toussaint earlier in the fight, he would have had a better chance of winning the fight.

All in all, Toussaint looked pretty good in winning. He landed a lot of clean shots with his left hand that caught Mosley Jr. all night long. The two things that I didn’t like about Toussaint was his lack of huge power, and the fact that he appeared to fade in the last 4 rounds. Toussaint struggled when he started to get pressured by Mosley Jr. Had this been a good middleweight instead of Mosley, I think Toussaint would have been in serious trouble in there.

Toussaint is going to need to make a ton of improvements for him to get to the next level to where he can compete against the best fighters.

As for Mosley Jr., he’s got to fix a lot of different flaws in his game for him to improve enough to where he can be called a contender. Mosley Jr. needs to learn how to move his head, cut off the ring quicker, lower in stance, and throw his jabs with power instead of pawing with them. Mosley Jr. was also admiring his work a lot after he’d throw a shot, and this made it too easy for him to be hit.

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In other results on the card:

Damien Hooper UD 10 Umar Salamov

Brent Dames points 6 Jonel Dapidran