Edis Tatli retained EBU belt

By WBCboxing.com

The EBU lightweight championship fight between Edis Tatli (31–2) and Frank Urquiaga (12–1) turned out to be a war. It was an action-packed fight with both boxers landing hard shots and neither one giving up an inch.

Urquiaga started the fight aggressively but had trouble getting through the taller Tatli’s jab. By the second round Urquiaga’s right eye was starting to swell. In the second round Urquiaga got Tatli on the ropes, but his combination left the champion smiling.

Urquiaga picked up the pace in the third and was more successful with his combinations, but Tatli answered with a good variety of uppercuts, left hooks and right hands. In the fourth Tatli took the center of the ring and commanded the action with his jab, and in the fifth he started to land stiff one-twos and right hands.

The sixth round started well for Urquiaga as the challenger got in booming body shots, but toward the end of the round he seemed to tire. In the seventh, in the midst of a heated exchange, Tatli got in a left hook that hurt Urquiaga. The challenger recovered, went back to attack mode and got in a beautiful uppercut in the final minute of the round.

The eighth was a wild round as Tatli hurt Urquiaga again, but the challenger recovered and snapped Tatli’s head back with a shot of his own. The two fighters exchanged punch for a punch for the remainder of the round. By the end of ninth both fighters seemed bruised.

In the tenth Urquiaga threw some flashy combinations as he got Tatli on the ropes, but later Tatli got in good shots of his own. The championship rounds started cautiously until Tatli took control of the 11th with a barrage of jabs and one-one-twos. Urquiaga answered with a hard hook that landed flush on Tatli’s jaw.

Tatli seemed to do enough to take the final round as both fighters started to get more and more exhausted. The final scores were 116-112, 116-114 and 115-113 for Tatli.