In a bout that was touted as a rough fight coming in between Timothy Bradley and Diego Chaves, the roughest part came at the end of the fight when the bout was scored a draw at the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, Saturday night.
With scores of 116-112 Chaves, 115-113 Bradley, 114-114 even, the bout’s outcome surprised most in media row, as the majority of the press had Bradley winning the fight easily.
Fight Hub TV’s unofficial scorecard had Bradley ahead 117-111, with most rounds dominated by Bradley despite what the judges scored it.
Bradley said the bout was fairly close, but there was no way that he lost the fight under any circumstances.
“I’m not going to say it was horrible, but I’m not a judge,” Bradley said. “I maybe gave him four rounds, max 5 at that. I was landing clean punches and felt like I won the fight.”
Chaves was not as dirty as he was in August when he faced Brandon Rios at the same site, but an unintentional head butt damaged Bradley’s left cheek early in the bout and by the 12th round, it was extremely swollen.
“There was a lot of head butts early on, then he landed good right hands,” Bradley Said. “I felt it. Solid right hands that made it well. I can see fine.”
Bradley was able to let Chaves bring the fight to him and utilize his counter-punching abilities, something he swayed away from in his rematch against Manny Pacquiao in April.
Chaves had his moments in the bout, but they were usually answered by Bradley, halting any momentum that the Argentine native tried to mount.
Despite the controversial outcome, Chaves was pleased with the decision as he thought the fight could of gone either way.
“I thought it was a pretty even fight but I thought I got the best in many instances in the fight,” Chaves said. “Later I felt that we needed that intensity because we felt the fight was even. We needed a little bit more to take the victory back to Argentina.”
Final punch stats for the bout ended up being Bradley landed 225 of 572 (39 percent) and Chaves landed 152 of 570 (27 percent). Power punches landed also favored Bradley at 146 out of 343 (43 percent), as Chaves landed 108 of 323 power shots (33 percent)
The action in the ring and the CompuBox numbers favored Bradley, but for whatever reason, the judges didn’t agree with what was obvious to the majority watching.
The decision was the second horrid one of the night, with the Mauricio Herrera-Jose Benavidez outcome was arguably more disgusting as the Bradley-Chaves one.
Herrera controlled most of the fight and was the winner in the eyes of the press a ringside, but the judges sided with Benavidez, despite him fighting with his back to the ropes for much of the fight, awarding him a unanimous decision with scores of 116-112 (x2) and 117-111.
Middleweight Andy Lee stole the show with his TKO victory over Matt Korobov, as he was down according to all three judges up until he landed a huge hook in Round 6, that had Korobov essentially out on his feet, giving tonight’s televised portion its only clear cut winner of the evening.
