By: Sean Crose
Texan Maurice Hooker appeared on Saturday’s Ortiz-McKinson card at Dickies’ Arena in Fort Worth. The 27-2-3 super welterweight battled the 15-1-1 Blair Cobbs in a bout scheduled for ten. Cobbs rocked and then dropped Hooker at the end of the first. Hooker beat the count and went on to trade with his man. The aggressive southpaw Cobbs knocked Hooker down two more times in the second – once at the beginning of the round and once towards the end. Hooker beat the count on both occasions, but certainly didn’t look good. Still, the man looked a bit better in the third, landing well at the end of the round.
By the fourth, Hooker appeared to be back in the fight. Each man threw wildly at his opponent. The question was how many more hard shots would Hooker be able to take? The fifth continued to be a slugfest, though Hooker needed to do something notable as he was considerably down on the cards due to suffering the three knockdowns. Blair received an accidental head butt, which opened up a cut, in the sixth. With that being said, Hooker went on to have his best round.
Hooker started coming in behind the jab in the seventh, but Cobbs was still able to land well. A second accidental head butt occurred in the eighth. Hooker then proceeded to pursue his man throughout the round. “Get your left foot outside of his right,” Terence Crawford himself said to Hooker in the corner in between rounds. Cobbs continued to avoid Hooker in the ninth while throwing the occasional pot shot. Hooker was unable to do anything significant in the chapter. Cobbs then spent the tenth and final round employing a slippery defense. He ended up winning the match on the judge’s cards by unanimous decision.