[Thomas Hearns]

Civic Auditorium, Albuquerque, NM, United States, 2013-01-04

Round 7

Johann Duhaupas 0-5-0 vs Pawel Kolodziej 1-3-1
Kolodziej won a competitve first round but then Duhaupas answered winning the second on a great form but the referee deducted a point from him due to a low blow. The fight continued changing and the Polish won the third round. Both rounds four and fifth were even and difficult to rate ones.
Finally Kolodziej won an actionless last round to secure his victory on this lackluster fight.
My scorecard was 59-56 for Kolodjiej, the official scorecards were 58-55 and 59-55 (x2) for the winner by unanimous decision Pawel Kolodziej.

Manuel Charr 2-3-0 vs Taras Bidenko 3-2-0
The first round was very even for the first half but on the bottom half Bidenko connected a pair of great quick combinations to win the stanza.
The second round was rather competitive but again Bidenko closed it better connecting a strong uppercut to Charr’s chin to take the round.
The fight continued on the same way on the third round, with Charr better on the first half but with Bidenko closed the round stronger.
On the fourth round there was poor action but Bidenko was the only man to attemp something. Charr was totally pasive.
The fifth round was a close affaire that could be ruled for either fighter. The last round was very anticlimathic with very poor action but with Bidenko winning it.
My scorecard was 60-55 for Bidenko, the official scorecards were 60-54 and 58-56 for Bidenko and someway 57-57, so Bidenko was the winner by majority decision.
With this victory Bidenko secured his pass to the second round, depending the result of Lebedev he could be second or third on the group standings.

Antonio Tarver 5-0-0 (3) vs Dennis Lebedev 3-1-1 (2)
With most of the things defined on the group, the best two fighters of it faced eachother.
Tarver wanted to finish the group undefeated like Wlad Klitschko on the Group 1 and Lebedev needed a victory to pass Bidenko on the standings table and finished second.
The first round started with a lot of action with both fighters connecting good power blows, Lebedev hurt Tarver with two separatd hooks, but Tarver put Lebedev on trouble with one hook of his own. The round was for Lebedev by a slim margin.
Early on the second round Tarver landed a left-right combination that stopped Lebedev and then he continued outboxing the Russian to win the round convincingly. The round hadn’t the same accelerated pace as the first one.
Tarver continued in control,on the third round and with his trademark left hook was causing a lot of trouble for the Russian.
The fourth round had ninety seconds without clean punches, but on the bottom half Lebedev connected some blows to win a slow round.
On the fifth round Tarver seemed to regain the control of the fight combinating bodywork with head snapping left uppercuts, but then he failed with a one-two combnation and Lebedev found the space to connect a violent shot under Tarver’s ribcage and sent him to the canvas for the ten count. So the final result was Lebedev by KO5, a really amazing victory for the Russian.

Final Standings

A.Tarver 10 -Record 5-1-0 (3)-
D.Lebedev 9 -Record 4-1-1 (3)-
T.Bidenko 8 -Record 4-2-0-
F.Botha 6 -Record 3-3-0 (1)-
P.Kolodziej 5 -Record 2-3-1-
M.Charr 4 -Record 2-4-0-
J.Duhaupas 0 -Record 0-0-6-

Tarver, Lebedev and Bidenko passed to the next tournament stage.