By: William Holmes
The Mohegan Sun at Pocono Downs in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania was the host site for tonight’s edition of NBC Sports Network Fight Night Series. The Main Events and Peltz Boxing Promotions event featured a main event between Anatoliy Dudchenko (19-2) and Nadjib Mohammedi (34-3) for the right to challenge Bernard Hopkins for his light heavyweight belt.
A lightweight bout between Philadelphia natives Karl Dargan (15-0) and Anthony Flores (11-4-1) was the first televised fight of the night.
Both boxers fought out of the orthodox stance and Dargan had the speed advantage while Flores had the height and reach advantage. Dargan opened up the bout with several good right hands to the body and head, and he was easily evading the jabs of Flores. His jab also had a hard snap behind it, and his right hooks bruised the left eye of Flores in the first round.
Dargan was still in control during the second round and was blocking most of Flores’ punches. Dargan was landing his looping right hooks and his jab continued to be effective. Dargan also took the third round and landed effective straight right hands to the head and left hooks to the body. His best punch of the third round was a counter right uppercut that forced Flores to hold on.
Flores showed a good body attack in the fourth round, which was also his best round of the night. Dargan however came out firing in the fifth round and hurt Flores badly with a vicious right hook. He followed it up with several more hooks that sent Flores crashing to the mat.
Flores was able to get back to his feet but was immediately met with another hard straight right cross. The referee immediately jumped in and stopped the fight at 0:42 of the fifth round.
Ukranian light heavyweight contender Anatoliy Dudchenko (19-2) and the six years younger Nadjib Mohammedi (34-3) met in the main event of the night for the right to be called the IBF #1 contender.
Dudchenko had the height, reach, and weight advantage over Mohammedi, but he was six years older than Mohammedi and looked it inside the ring.
Dudechnko was aggressive in the first round, but was reaching for his punches and they were just short of its intended target. Mohammedi was accurate with his jabs and was applying a surprising amount of pressure. The first round ended with Mohammedi slipping wild punches from Dudchenko.
Dudchenko was told by his corner to stop loading up on his punches prior to the start of the second round, and he followed that advice in the second round and was able to land a few decent counter right hands. The second round could have arguably gone to Dudchenko, but it was his last good round of the night.
There was a lot of feinting in the third round but Mohammedi looked the be the fresher fighter and was applying an increasing amount of pressure. Mohammedi was connecting with his short right hand by the end of the third.
Mohammedi really turned up the pressure in the fourth round and had Dudchenko backing up towards the ropes often. He had Dudchenko covering up by the ropes and was eating hard right hands from Mohammedi. The fourth and fifth rounds were strongly in favor of Mohammedi, and the fifth round was so dominating that it could have been scored 10-8.
Dudchenko looked like a beaten man in the sixth round and the referee was warning Dudchenko to show him something or he’d stop the fight. He came out in the seventh round with a cut on the bridge of his nose but Mohammedi showed no mercy. He pounded Dudchenko with several more hard combinations whenever his back touched the ropes and Dudchenko offered little offense in return.
The referee finally stopped the beating at 0:37 of the seventh round.