The hard-hitting weekly 3 punch combo is back, and boxing has been on a roll over the past few weeks, with a loaded calendar and multiple fight cards every weekend. This past weekend, we saw some confusing Compubox stats with the Nonito Donaire vs. Jeffrey Mathebula fight, the rise of heavyweight prospect Magomed “Mago” Abdusalamov on a Friday Night Fights appearance and more. But first, we start off with some sad news, the passing of Jimmy Bivins.
The Passing of Jimmy Bivins
Last week the sport of boxing lost Jimmy Bivins, who died at the age of 92 in Cleveland, OH. Bivins was born in Georgia in 1919. His family moved to Cleveland when he was three and he always considered himself as having been a native Clevelander.
Bivins, nicknamed the “Cleveland Spider-Man”, turned pro at the famed Public Hall in Cleveland, OH on January 15, 1940 with a 2nd round TKO victory over Emory Morgan. He would go on to fight for fifteen years and amassed a professional record of 86-25-1 fighting as a light heavyweight and heavyweight. Bivins defeated some of the biggest names in the sport, including eight fighters who held or would go on to hold world titles. Among those fighters he holds wins against are Joey Maxim, Ezzard Charles and Archie Moore.
Despite having defeated some of the best fighters of his era Bivins never fought for a world title. In 2002, Ring Magazine ranked the top light heavyweights of all time. Bivins was ranked sixth on that list. In 1999, Jimmy Bivins received some long overdue honor and was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. He was a great, under appreciated fighter and will be missed by the entire boxing community.
Compubox Stats Donaire vs. Mathebula
I will start this out by admitting that I am not a fan of the Compubox statistics that are shown during HBO fights. The numbers can be very deceiving as they cannot attribute for one extremely important factor when scoring a fight — and that is punching power. In my opinion, this was never more evident than in the Donaire-Mathebula fight on Saturday night.
On paper, Mathebula landed 231 out of 919 punches thrown to Donaire’s 151 out of 515. In the first ten rounds of the fight Mathebula landed more punches in nine of the rounds with one even. However, throughout the fight the punches that Donaire was landing were clearly cleaner and much more powerful. Mathebula’s “power punches” seemed to be having little to no effect on Donaire. And at least watching on TV they appeared to have no power at all behind them.
Yet some, namely those calling the fight on HBO, seemed to believe that due to the punch stats the fight was much closer than it actually was. The number one basis in scoring a fight is which fighter in each round landed the cleaner, more effective punches, and there is no question in this fight it was Donaire. I scored the fight 117-110 for Donaire, and therefore I feel the judges in this fight had the scoring absolutely correct. Since we often blast judges for their poor scoring the judges in this fight need to be applauded for scoring this bout accurately.
Abdusalamov vs. Byarm on Friday Night Fights
Last week I wrote that I felt Maurice Byarm would upset Magomed Abdusalamov on Friday Nights Fights co-feature. However, Abdusalamov showed superior technique and punching power in destroying Byarm in two rounds. Earlier this year, Byarm gave one of the top heavyweight prospects Bryant Jennings a tough fight in losing a ten round decision. In my estimation this makes the performance by Abdusalamov much more impressive. I would still like to see what happens when a heavyweight takes Abdusalamov into the later rounds but definitely feel that he is a heavyweight on the rise.
