Before all eyes turn to Las Vegas later this evening, a highly-anticipated rematch took place.
September 13 is a massive night for boxing, with one of the biggest fights in recent years taking place at Allegiant Stadium.
Canelo Alvarez vs Terence Crawford, which has been running alongside Noche UFC, features two of the sport’s biggest stars meeting in a dream clash.
However, over in Ireland, the headliner featured two opponents that have already met once this year.
On the same night that Molly McCann made her pro debut inside the ring, the main event featured a grudge match for a vacant world title.
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Fans slam split decision verdict in Lewis Crocker’s rematch with Paddy Donovan
At Windsor Park in Belfast on Saturday night, Lewis Crocker faced Paddy Donovan in a 12-round main event for the IBF welterweight title.
The title has been held by the likes of Errol Spence Jr. and Terence Crawford in recent years, before Jaron Ennis, who has been training with Canelo Alvarez recently, vacated the belt in July.
They first met earlier this year in March where Crocker was awarded the victory via disqualification.
Donovan had knocked his opponent down in the eighth round but the referee ruled that the bell had already sounded by the time that he had connected.
This time around, it was Donovan that was dropped in the fight, once in the third round and once in the fifth.
Despite the fact that a lot of fans believed that he still did enough to win the fight by a clear margin, the split decision went in favor of his opponent, leading to some passionate reactions on social media.
‘Boxing is complete politics. This is why people watch UFC these days. Paddy Donovan battered Crocker pillar to post apart from the knockdowns & he gets robbed of a world f—— title to change his life. F—— pathetic sport it’s getting. All because it’s in his hometown. Joke.’
‘Twice Paddy Donovan has been robbed against Crocker.’
‘Yeah, boxing is so f—— corrupt Paddy Donovan won that fight nine rounds to three in my opinion. He had such higher output throughout the fight and despite Lewis Crocker getting 2 knockdowns, he didn’t do enough. Fixed b——-.’
‘How has Crocker won that? Absolute joke. Donovan boxed his head off for the last 6 rounds.’
‘Another shocking boxing decision. Yes, Crocker had two 10-8s but he lost every other round except the first. Robbery is a hard word in boxing but Donovan won that by 4 rounds comfortably. Shocking decision. The 2 judges who gave that fight to Crocker need to go to Specsavers.
‘I don’t think there’s a more rotten sport at times. Dress it up whatever way you like, Paddy Donovan won that fight.’
Terence Crawford admitted that the judges had been spoken about ahead of his fight with Canelo Alvarez
Ahead of Terence Crawford’s huge clash with Canelo Alvarez later today, ‘Bud’ was asked about the potential impact of the judges.
It’s not uncommon for the scorecards to produce highly controversial talking points, and Alvarez has had a few of these go his way throughout his career.
Crawford spoke during an interview on Inside The Ring about acknowledging whether this might be a factor that he has to think about at Allegiant Stadium.
“That ain’t the way I’m thinking but it’s definitely been something that was mentioned and that we talked about, not giving away rounds. Making sure we’re in control of the whole fight and not letting up. We’re definitely aware of things like that but we can’t focus on that. We got to focus on the fight.”
Crawford noted that in order to counter this, he knows he needs to win every round in Las Vegas.