Friday, April 17, 2009

By Isaac Kuhlman

  ShoBox Presentations along with Roy Englebrecht Productions put on "Championship Boxing at the Border" tonight with the last two fights being televised via Showtime. The main event featured Cuban sensation Yuriorkis Gamboa (14-0, 12 KOs) facing a cagey veteran in Jose Rojas (25-6-1, 17 KOs) of Venezuela in a WBA Featherweight title bout. The co-feature was also an international duel between Welterweights Selcuk Aydin (17-0, 14 KOs) of Turkey against Said Ouali (25-2, 17 KOs) of Morrocco.

  Both fights were longer-distance fights, which allowed the fans to get a lot of action. In the first televised fight of the night, Selcuk Aydin took on Said Ouali in a very repetitive, but also surprisingly interesting, fight to watch.

  The fight was scheduled for 12 rounds. Rounds one through four were dominated by Aydin as he took the punching to Ouali every time that Ouali backed himself into the ropes which was often.

  Ouali kept baiting Aydin and telling him to "come on," but when Aydin would close in, Ouali just closed up and took some vicious punches around and through his gloves. After two rounds, Ouali had swelling around both eyes, but the right eye was worse for the wear.

  At round 5 Ouali decided to change things up a little by moving the fight to the center of the ring. In the times he stayed in the middle of the ring, Ouali was dominant with the jab while Aydin could not get close enough to land his powerful uppercuts and combos. The problem for Ouali is that he kept backing into the ropes where Aydin would close the distance and flurry several times per round.

  Ouali did manage to land some big shots here and there, but the action, the tempo, and the position was dominated by Aydin.

  In round 6 Aydin was deducted a point for a low blow by referee Tony Weeks. Ouali was doing a lot of his own reffing throughout the fight, making singles for low blows and back of the head shots on a couple of different occasions throughout. He also waived his hand for fans to cheer as he was in the midst of Aydin's grasp on the ropes.

  The fight was ruled a split decision (113-114, 115-112, 116-111) for Aydin, but Aydin seemed to control the pace of the fight and landed more punches with more damage all fight long.

  The main event was a much more lop-sided contest. Yuriorkis Gamboa, an undefeated fighter looking to claim his first major title (WBA Featherweight), went up against a fighter in Jose Rojas who is almost 10 years his senior, and that is how it played out.

  Gamboa lived up to his nickname "the Cyclone" by hitting Rojas and moving as Rojas would swing and miss. After the first round, Rojas had major swelling around his right eye, and it looked as if his nose was broken. If it wasn't, then there was a lot of swelling to make it appear so.

  Gamboa hit with hard, accurate punches and for most of the fight he dodged nearly every punch thrown by Rojas. Every so often, Rojas got a clean punch in, but Gamboa just looked to be angered by the shots. Gamboa dominated the fight so heavily that there were multiple times in the fight where he would knock Rojas off balance, and then he would allow him to regain his composure as Gamboa walked with his hands down away from Rojas.

  Gamboa knocked down Rojas in the 5th round, even though Rojas looked to be slipping at the same time he got hit in the head. After that Gamboa proceeded to close Rojas' right eye completely shut, and then he worked on swelling his left eye and nose further.

  By round 9 it looked as if Rojas had almost no eyesight left, and his face looked like a California Raisin--bruised purple and wrinkling. At the beginning of round 9, the referee even asked Rojas if he could see to which Rojas nodded "yes."

  However, after another half round of sheer domination, the referee stopped the fight to Rojas' objection. Rojas was not in agreement with the decision, but, even before the referee stopped the fight, Rojas' own cornermen were getting up to the canvas as if to throw in the towel.

  With the win, Gamboa became 15-0 with 13 KOs and earned the WBA Featherweight Championship.