Both managed to win their fights convincingly on paper, but for those watching there was some shaky moments for Australian stars Tim Bell and Jamie Pittman on the Super Boxer series on Thursday night. Facing Tongan born Walter Papu’a for the OPBF/PABA Light Heavyweight titles, most anticipated the hard hitting Papu’a to go on the attack. However, it was Papu’a’s fine counter punching skills that had seen him win 11 of his 14 professional fights and he racked up an early lead on points by landing several hard left hooks in the opening rounds. Bell looked at sea against a much more complete boxer, but his iron jaw and will as well as his incredible conditioning eventually broke down his opponent and he outworked him over the back half of the fight to take a unanimous decision. Papu’a looked to be an excellent boxer and it was a shame his work rate wasn’t up to par as he’d give a lot of fighters a tough fight if he had the energy to go 12 rounds like he did the first five. As for Bell, his durability is going to make him a tough fight for anyone but I think his skill level will need to improve if he’s going to take the step to world class opponents.
On the undercard, Jamie Pittman survived a rough six round fight with journeyman Frank Ciampa. After rocking Ciampa in the 2nd round, Pittman received an inadvertant thumb in the eye which caused his eye to swell heavily. Whoever his cutman is, he did an excellent job as Pittman’s eye went down through the course of the fight but Pittman never fully solved the awkward style of Ciampa and had to settle for a unanimous decision. In the other two televised fights, Bantamweight prospect Mark Quon outscored Thai import Thonthai Rajanondh over six entertaining rounds while Heavyweight prospect Andre Meunier stopped Kim Heta in the 2nd round.
In a (for some fucked up reason) non televised fight for the Australian Super Middleweight title, Les Piper outscored Luke Maloney over ten rounds to retain his title. It’s fucking stupid not to show fights like this as these are the type of guys who need the coverage. Some promoter has lost a good local main event by wasting this fight on the unaired prelims of a card like this. I’d also like to know what happened to Kariz Kariuki’s fight even though that fight was very unlikely to go past the 2nd round.
I also have a few criticisms of the coverage and officiating itself. Darrell Beattie has got to go, really what does he bring to the table for this promotion? He obviously has not the slightest idea about boxing but is only in there as a channel ten personality. The referee’s were obviously not as bad as last week, but the idiot who refereed the Quon fight needs a reality check. You aren’t the star of the show mate, those two were putting on a good clean fight and you over-refereed the fuck out of it. If one guy is holding and throwing NOTHING then you warn him for holding. If the two guys are putting on a good fight, STAY THE FUCK OUT OF IT AND LET THEM FIGHT! Some of the judging was a little dodgey as well with one judge finding a 10-8 round in favour of Bell somewhere in that fight. If you didn’t have Walter up at least 3-2 after five rounds you need to hand back your judging licence I’m afraid. Overall though the fights were all entertaining and as far as I’m concerned it beats the shit out of anything Foxtel has put on domestically in recent times.
