Mundine scores lacklustre victory in light-middleweight debut
A near capacity crowd saw Anthony Mundine (39-3, 23 KOs) use a high volume-punching attack along with his typical fleet footed approach to outscore the underwhelmed Argentine Carlos Adan Yanez (30-13-3, 16 KOs) at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre in Queensland.
Mundine outpointed the clearly overmatched Yanez to take an easy unanimous decision in a bout that was supposed to be contested for the WBA International light-middleweight title. The title was won last month by talented Armenian Vanes Martirosyan who defeated previously unbeaten Joe Greene at New York’s Yankee Stadium.
Once it was clear that Mundine’s fight would not be for the WBA International light-middleweight title, confusion reigned supreme amongst many forms of the Australian media. Some newspapers in accurately reported that the fight was a defence of Mundine’s IBO middleweight title; others reported that it was for the WBA light-middleweight world title which considering the calibre of opponent that Mundine was facing, surely was not possible.
Nevertheless, Mundine did end up getting the job done against Yanez, but the lack of knockout power in Mundine’s punches is getting to the point where it is becoming an almost unavoidable talking point.
“Line them up and it will be dominoes. I felt good and this was a good workout for me over the full 12 rounds at 154 pounds”, Mundine said post-fight.
The so-called party was crashed during the post-fight interviews when WBO/WBA #7 world rated light-middleweight and fellow Aussie Ryan Waters gate-crashed Mundine’s interview, calling out Mundine and challenging him to a possible fight in Sydney later in the year. Mundine didn’t take kindly to the challenge, shoving Waters in the face and almost starting an all-out brawl in centre ring.
Despite looking good in small spurts rather than displaying a polished and persistent performance, Mundine still believed he was in good enough condition to fight another twelve-rounds against Waters.
“I feel I was getting stronger, I still feel energised. I'm pretty happy that it went twelve rounds, I wanted to finish it in the later rounds but maybe I have to work a bit more on my strength … coming down in weight.”
Despite doing his best to silence his critics, anything other than a stoppage victory for Mundine did nothing to convince the everyday boxing pundits that he will be a competitive force in the light-middleweight division. He now sets his sights on what has been the goal since the beginning of this year, becoming the first fighter to win world titles in three separate divisions in descending order.
One thing that was clear after Mundine’s fight was that if Mundine doesn’t begin to fight genuine world-class opposition like he has been promising for years, the general public will most likely lose interest in his fights and not back any more of his pay-per-view promotions that consistently feature uncompetitive, boring mismatches.
Mundine dominated most of the rounds with his harder and faster shots. Yanez, the shorter and smaller of the two fighters just couldn't get out of the way of anything thrown at him. Yanez tried to take the fight to Mundine, especially in the opening three-rounds when he tried to brawl with Mundine on the inside, however as expected Mundine was too much and too big for the Argentine on the inside.
You might have received a raised eyebrow after hearing that Mundine had failed to impressively defeated Yanez, however if you told someone eighteen-months ago that Mundine would be a leading light-middleweight contender, the reaction you would receive would be something similar to the forementioned... and then some.