CLOSE BUT NO CIGAR
Campbell acquits himself commendably against the masterful Linares
‘I STARTED TO BOX HIM A LITTLE BECAUSE I DIDN’T WANT TO GET HURT’
OUTSIDE of their shared profession, there is very little about Luke
Campbell to remind you of Gennady Golovkin. But on Saturday night in California, the Hull fighter’s challenge of WBA lightweight titlist Jorge Linares followed much the same narrative arc as the Kazakh’s controversial draw with Canelo Alvarez one week previously: he fell behind early, rallied to win and even dominate the middle rounds, but saw his opponent surge in the final quarter of the contest and deny him victory via split decision.
Although Victor Loughlin adjudged Campbell the winner by 115-113, he was overruled by Max Deluca and Zac Young, who saw the bout as a Linares win by 114-113 and 115-112 respectively, and theirs was a viewpoint that broadly reflected the ringside consensus. Campbell had come far to make his first world title challenge, and he had come close to making that challenge a successful one; but in the end, he fell just short, with two of the 12 rounds pivotal in his doing so.
The first of those was round two. Having opened the contest well, taking the opening frame by working behind his long southpaw jab and controlling the center of the ring, he encountered a more aggressive Linares in the second. Even then, he was holding his own against the veteran – now living in London, but hailing from Barinas, Venezuela – despite shipping a couple of solid hooks over his jab, until suddenly Linares pounced forward behind a lightning fast three-punch combination, punctuated by a right hand that dropped Campbell to his haunches.
The Englishman was comfortably able to beat the count of referee Jack Reiss,
but he revealed afterward that, from that point on, he experienced double vision in the ring. And when he rose, he did so with a cut under his right eye and a swelling cheek. He looked somewhat the worse for wear, and it was easy to envisage a scenario in which the amateur standout would find himself outclassed by a man who held and lost world titles at two weights before Campbell had secured Olympic gold. It is to his considerable credit that he did not fold and even imposed himself on the contest as the rounds unfolded.
But if he looks back at the tape to see where it all went wrong, he might also dwell on the second pivotal round, which was the 11th. By then, Campbell had turned a deficit in points and a seeming deficit in ability into a lead; but Linares had rallied in round 10, and Campbell needed to prevent the Venezuelan from building momentum. He did not; in fact, he was oddly quiescent, allowing Linares to steal that frame and gather a head of steam entering the closing three minutes. Avoid the knockdown and fight with greater energy and desire in the 11th, and Campbell might well now have a world title to go with his multiple amateur baubles. Instead, he is left to rue a second pro defeat. Such thin lines separate success from failure at the highest levels.
Between those two rounds, this was a contest of sublime skill on the part of both men. Put two counterpunchers in the ring together and the result can be a stultifying bore; instead, Linares and Campbell served up a fascinating, fast-paced serving of feinting, moving, punching and counter-punching, each man trying to lure the other into a trap and then strike. It is a measure of the closeness of the contest that, according to Compubox statistics, Campbell landed precisely one more punch than Linares over the full 12 rounds (while throwing more and landing at a lower percentage.)
Campbell lost the third round as well as the second, but by the end of that frame, he was starting to establish his range, and in the fourth and especially the fifth, his hard jabs kept Linares at distance, preventing him from stepping in close enough to fire his fast combinations and keeping him in position for Campbell’s power shots. Campbell invested heavily to the Linares body, and by the sixth was showing excellent footwork, repeatedly cracking Linares with a lead hook and sliding laterally out of range. He was clearly planning several moves ahead: in the sixth, he fired his jab just above Linares’ head, causing the Venezuelan to slip under it and walk into an uppercut. In the seventh, Campbell was putting together solid combinations, many of them keying off that lead southpaw hook, and by the end of that round, he clearly had the momentum.
By the end of the eighth, however, Linares appeared to be once more finding his range, stepping back slightly to tempt Campbell forward and then cracking him with a counter hook. Campbell wrested back control in the ninth, but then Linares began his surge, concluding the 10th by landing three right hands in quick succession and then a fourth right at the bell. Campbell’s quiet 11th left the two men with everything to fight for in the 12th, and the two exchanged combinations early on, but it was Linares who was in the groove now, firing fast combos much as he had done earlier, landing a terrific hook near the end and bouncing on his toes in confidence as the bell ended.
“He’s a tough opponent,” Linares
[left] conceded after the scores were announced. “People said he would be easy, but he’s an Olympic champion. In the fifth round, I started to box him a little because I didn’t want to get hurt. But from round 10, I wanted to let the dogs out, and that’s what I did.”
“No one can ever doubt my heart,” said a defiant Campbell. “I got off to a rocky start, but I don’t think he landed clean with anything. I think I outclassed him.”
There were only four fights on the undercard, the most entertaining of which saw Los Angeles-based Armenian Azat Hovhannisyan score a unanimous decision win over Sergio
Frias of Guadalajara, Mexico in a super bantamweight contest. Hovhanissyan started the contest relentlessly pressuring Frias, who sought to return fire off the ropes; as the pace slowed, Hovhannisyan’s output dropped a little, but he continued to stalk Frias relentlessly, generally eschewing the jab and using single power punches to set up his combinations. If his hands-down/ slipping punches/pivoting rapidly to a new position/smirking repeatedly at his opponent style brought to mind his countryman Vic Darchinyan, that isn’t surprising, as he trains out of the same Glendale Boxing Club as Darchinyan – as well as former MMA champ Ronda Rousey, among others. Frias put forth a determined effort, but Hovhanissyan’s only real trouble in the bout came as a result of an accidental ninth round headbutt, which opened a nasty, bloodstreaming cut over his left eye. After 10 rounds, scores were 100-90 from and Zac Young, and 98-92 from Don Griffin. Referee was Tom Taylor.
Super-featherweight Abraham Lopez bounced back from his first career loss in May by stopping Isao Carranza, wobbling him in the second and getting the better of a a fusillade of furious exchanges in a frenetic contest until Carranza opted to remain his corner after the fourth round. Romero Duno cut Mexican Juan Pablo Sanchez over the eye and outpointed him over eight. All three judges scored 78-74 for the Filipino. In the opening bout, Los Angeles’ Rafael Gramajo scored a unanimous decision (59-56, two of 58-56) over Pedro Melo, of Mexico. bn