By David Martinez / Boxing Historian
This past weekend proved to be another exciting and unpredictable weekend in boxing, as I personally picked two of the top three fights correctly. However, I was dead wrong with Nate Campbell’s upset split decision win over previously unbeaten Juan “The Baby Bull” Diaz.
Samuel Peter photo by George Garcia
It brought back a distant memory for me, from my younger days following boxing. I will always remember what my older mentors used to tell me, which was, experience takes it’s toll with the younger rising stars.
My first encounter in a relatively similar scenario for me was (and I will always remember this) in 1969 when an unbeaten junior welterweight rising star named Larry Harding was soundly beaten and exposed by an older and more experienced Eddie Garcia. This was certainly the case in an older Campbell winning the WBA/WBC/IBF Lightweight belts from the younger Diaz.
Personally, I can’t figure how one of the judges scored the fight in favor of Diaz. My scorecard was a one sided, convincing win for Campbell.
In the main event on the Campbell vs. Diaz card, from Cancun, Mexico, was the WBC heavyweight championship showdown Oleg Maskaev vs. Samuel Peter, in which Peter landed the bigger punches, and more of them, to knockout the older, 39 year old Russian fighter in round six. This now leaves boxing today with two legitimate, best recognized heavyweight champions, the other being IBF/WBO titlist Wladimir Klitschko. Hopefully, sooner than later, they will fight to unify the heavyweight division with only one champion; the WBA champion is the lesser known Ruslan Chagaev.
In the third of the top fights over this past weekend, which was a much anticipated unification Cruiserweight championship, the result was a devastating second round knockout win by WBA/WBC champion David Haye over WBO champion Enzo Maccarinelli that was witnessed by a SRO packed house of over 20,000 at the O2 Arena in London, England.
With more boxing action on the horizon, I am sure that we will see another exciting and unpredictable weekend as we just saw this past weekend!