Disgusted

Rigo has not been exactly the most exciting boxer in the fight game today and he has repeatedly given boxing fans a reason to be put off by his boring style fight after fight.

If disgust is indeed a learned response as Sigmund Freud suggested, then perhaps I am not to blame for feeling exactly that way after Guillermo Rigondeaux quit in his championship fight against Vasyl Lomachenko last Sunday.

I say learned, because Rigo has not been exactly the most exciting boxer in the fight game today and he has repeatedly given boxing fans a reason to be put off by his boring style fight after fight.

But his quit job after the sixth round last Sunday has to take the cake.

THE FIGHT. As with most Rigo fights, the earlier rounds were uneventful. In fairness, nobody expected this to be a cave-man type slugfest, considering that Lomachenko himself is an expert ring tactician.

But you could see that by the third round, Loma had began to solve the Rigo puzzle and was starting to land cleanly. Sure, Rigo would occasionally land a counter, but Loma was getting confident and springing traps.

By the fourth and fifth rounds, Loma began to utilize his vaunted lateral movement to the hilt. Every time, the shorter Rigo ducked low to avoid artillery fire, Loma would swing to his defensive-minded opponent’s vulnerable side and land a staccato of short punches.

Loma also proved just as fast as Rigo and would land jabs and straight left hands while both men were on the center of the ring.

There was a lot of clinching on the part of Rigo which resulted in some gamesmanship resorted to by both fighters in retaliation.

What was shocking was that Rigo abruptly quit on his stool before the start of the 7th round, ostensibly blaming an injured left hand.

Injured left hand my foot! How could a left hand that didn’t even land on anything substantial get injured? RIGO. The crowd could not hide its displeasure at the shocking turn of events and roundly booed Rigo during the post-fight interview. How can you blame them after all the pre-fight bluster Rigo unleashed about no version of Loma not being good enough to beat him.

Turns out, he was so ineffective against Rigo that according to Compubox he landed only a total of 12 punches thru 5 rounds and didn’t land more than 3 punches in any round.

At age 37, I don’t know where his career goes from here. He would be a high risk being promoted at the championship level.

The fight world knows he quit because he knew he was losing and wanted to find an excuse. A way out for an impending, unavoidable loss.

Unfortunately, if he thought he could somehow salvage his reputation by assigning his first pro loss to an injury, he was dead wrong. Disgustingly wrong. VERBATIM.” Rigo has a big heart but he surrendered on Saturday night…He wasn’t hurt and wasn’t beat up so there are obvious mental issues there.” Gary Hyde, former Rigondeaux manager (www.boxingscene.com)

LAST ROUND. It’s on the Gilas Defenders who are our newly crowned champions in the IBP Basketball League. Cheers!