Horrendous cut could dent Duddy's World title hopes by Kevin Taylor Feb 24th 2008

John Duddy survived an horrendous cut above his left eye and a bad start to outpoint Canadian Walid Smichet over ten rounds at Madison Square Garden in New York last night, but a hyped fight with WBC and WBO unbeaten champion Kelly Pavlik in June must now be in serious doubt. Duddy started badly and was getting tagged by every shot from Smichet early on in the fight and looked just one punch away from being stopped on a number of occasions, but Smichet just couldn't land the killer blow and Duddy showed great heart and a great chin to stay on his feet after being tagged so much. The cut over his left eye opened in the first round and bleed profusely throughout the contest and I for one was surprised that the referee or doctor didn't seem to inspect it once during the contest. The fight could well have taken place in a six-foot square ring as the pair just went toe-to-toe and I gave the Canadian Smichet each of the first five rounds before Duddy finally decided to start using his jab at the same time as Smichet began to tire badly too. It was real-life Rocky stuff from Duddy who is scheduled to fight Kelly Pavlik in a World title fight and on this form he needs more fights before he even thinks of challenging for a title though and the cut is probably bad enough to keep him out of the fight anyway. With a big fan base in New York, Derry born Duddy seemed to want to impress too much and it wasn't until the second half of the fight that he really started using his boxing skill and boxing more at range. I had it even as did judge Frank Lombardi, while the other two judges surprisingly had the fight 98-92 to John Duddy to give him a majority decision. After the fight John Duddy seemed hesitant when drawn on the subject of fighting Pavlik in June, and seemed to indicate that he needed a bit more time before he challenged for the World title. "It wasn't my greatest performance, my timing was off, I was trying too hard to impress, tonight was far from perfect but it's another learning curve fight for me." On the undercard it was another snore-fest from the heavyweight's with Wladimir Klitschko unifying a couple of titles (IBF and WBO), by unanimously outpointing Sultan Ibragimov, once again matchsticks and red bull were in order to watch this one, but in some ways I wish I had recorded it and the next time I can't sleep I'll put it on and I'll be asleep within minutes.  For Klitschko it was the 50th win of his career and he wants to unify the other two titles too. Local fighter Joe Greene moved to 18-0 when Francisco Mora was forced to quit after the tenth round. Southpaw Green looked impressive early on and put the veteran Argentinean down a couple of times. Mora who's career has spanned twelve years and sixty-five fights including a points loss to our own Robin Reid back in 2002 at Wembley for the WBF super-middleweight title always seemed to be looking for a way out and in the end the fight had a strange ending with Mora on his knees in his corner after a clash of heads and he was still there when the bell went to start the 11th, but no one seemed sure who should stop the fight.

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