Can Xu upsets Jesus Rojas in action-packed battle, snags WBA title

Badlefthook.com

We had an early candidate for Fight of the Year tonight on DAZN, with Can Xu and Jesus Rojas going to war for 12 full rounds before Xu ultimately won a unanimous decision to take the WBA’s ‘world’ featherweight title. The three official judges scored it 118-110, 117-111, and 116-112 for Xu, while BLH edged the fight to Rojas, 115-113.

The DAZN commentating crew would be highly critical of the scorecards, with all of them believing the fight should’ve been much closer than it was scored, even if you edged the fight to Xu. I, obviously, would be inclined to agree with them considering how I scored the fight.

Either way, it was a really fun fight. Both fighters started off taking turns throwing combinations at each other, and that would be a trend that would continue throughout as the fighters sets a furious pace that really never let up through the final bell. And the fighters even showed a lot of respect for one another, touching gloves and hugging each other to start the 12th round after they both fought valiantly, evidenced by the punch stats.

CompuBox had Xu landing 380 of 1245 total punches (30.5%) while Rojas landed 388 of 1329 total punches (29.2%). How a fight like that could end up 118-110 on anyone’s scorecard is pretty absurd.

But with the win Xu (16-2, 2 KOs) gets his hands on a secondary world title while Rojas (26-3-1, 19 KOs) has to be a little bitter about how he wasn’t given much of a chance in this fight.