By: Sean Crose
Rising supermiddleweights Christian Mbilli, 29-0, and Lester Martinez, 19-0, threw down Saturday on the Canelo-Crawford card. The match was scheduled for 10. Mbilli got right to work at the opening bell. Martinez, however, was not cowed by the challenge. Suffice to say, both men continued to throw with bad intentions throughout the second. The war raged on in the third, though Andrew Ward was right when he said on the broadcast that more body work was needed. By the fourth it had become clear that this was a war of attrition.
The pace slowed a bit – a BIT – in the fifth. How could it not? With that in mind, the two fighters were still throwing hard at one another. The sixth was thrilling, but – like the fight as a whole – was hard to call. It was unquestionably a grueling battle. Hard as it was to believe, the seventh was more of the same – the same being an absolute hurricane. Each man was digging into his well of reserve energy in the eighth…and each man had his moments, but both remained standing. The ninth saw Mbilli getting rocked – but he wasn’t about to go down.
The twelfth and final round had the fighters landing powerful blows. After the final bell had rung, it was clear that this may well have been the fight of the year. Indeed, the last ten seconds were like something out of a Rocky movie. The decision of the judges was – unsurprisingly – a draw. These two were magnificent.
