WBO.com
Maurice Hooker may have had real difficulty making weight in order to even make a defense of his WBO junior welterweight title, but he was able to successfully go the distance tonight on DAZN, dominating Mikkel LesPierre over 12 rounds of action. The three official judges turned in scorecards of 120-107, 119-108, and 118-109, all in favor of Hooker. BLH scored it a shutout for Hooker as well, 120-107.
Hooker came into the fight with a number of question marks surround him, particularly of what kind of condition he would be in after he stuggled to hit the 140lb mark yesterday. But Hooker was able to keep up a good pace and mixed in a sustained attack to the body to wear LesPierre down.
In the ninth round Hooker hit LesPierre with a couple of clean left hooks to the liver, the second of which put LesPierre down in agony. LesPierre winced in pain as the referee counted, but managed to get up at the 9 1⁄2 count to continue with the bout. LesPierre managed to survive that moment and recover pretty well, but still couldn’t do enough to win rounds despite trying to pick it up down the stretch.
Final CompuBox stats had Hooker landing 240 of 928 total punches (25.9%) while LesPierre landed 103 of 488 total punches (21.1%).
With the win Hooker (26-0-3, 17 KOs) said he’s willing to fight anybody and told Jack Catterall, who was sitting ringside, that he would get his shot at his belt.
via badlefthook.com
Photo Credit: Ed Mulholland/Matchroom Boxing USA
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