Gennady Martirosyan

WBO #6 middleweight Gennady Martirosyan (20-2, 9 KOs) retained his WBO Europe title for the first time after a hard-fought stoppage of comebacking French veteran Aziz Daari (24-13-4, 20 KOs) on Saturday night at the Atmosphere Night Club in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Martirosyan didn’t show his usual aggressiveness but preferred to fight in Abraham-like style by boxing in spurts and covering in a shell-like defense for the rest of the time. Bigger and stronger Daari gave Martirosyan some scary moments in the midst of the fight when it seemed Gennady was gassing out quickly. He, however, found some intrinsic resources and increased his tempo after the seventh round. Round eight was all Martirosyan; in the ninth stanza Daari charged forward and had some mild success which proved to be his last stand in the bout. In round ten, Martirosyan marched forward and finally landed a huge left uppercut, which forced the Frenchman down after a few more blows on accumulation of punches. Heavily bleeding, Daari wobblingly stood up and survived the round only to retire on his stool during the break. Fightnews had it 96-94 – for the Russian at the time of stoppage.

In a short but energetic thriller, Russian cruiserweight Alexander Kotlobay (18-1, 12 KOs) survived a hard knockdown in the first to impressively ruin Argentinean kayo artist Mauro Adrian Ordiales (now 23-7, 22 KOs) in the second to acquire PABA interim and a vacant IBF International 200lb titles. Ordiales didn’t waste much time and went to Kotlobay swinging right after the starting bell. It took the Russian just ten seconds to floor Ordiales with a short right for the first time. The Argentinean got up and both fighters began trading punches in the center of the ring. At the end of the second minute Kotlobay connected with a hard left to the liver and down went Ordiales for the second time. Sensing his foe was too groggy to continue Kotlobay ran after him and was soon caught by a smashing left which sent him down hard right before the bell. Kotlobay was very lucky this punch landed too late for Ordiales. The Russian recovered well during the break and both pugilists continued to exchange hard blows in the second. In the midst of the stanza Ordiales opened his block a bit and was crushed down after a major right hook by Kotlobay. He stood up on shaky legs but was in no condition to continue so that referee Nikolay Puchkov stopped this wild brawl at 1:27 of the second round.

Comebacking Azerbaijani cruiserweight and former world title challenger Ali Ismailov (17-3-1, 12 KOs) erased bad memories of his latest defeat to Denis Lebedev with a wide and unanimous decision over ultra durable Latvian professional loser Jevgenijs Andrejevs (10-31, 2 KOs). Ismailov worked hard but failed to finish his clowning foe even despite a knockdown he had scored in the fifth after a huge left to the chin. Fightnews scored it 60-53 for WBC #26 Ismailov. The fight was scheduled for six rounds. Andrejevs has been stopped only once in his career – in his first ever outing.

Lightweight prospect Kazbek Shebzukhov (4-0-1, 3 KOs) scored a nice stoppage of Latvian Jevgenijs Kirillovs (4-5-1, 4 KOs) in the first televised bout of the evening. Kirillovs was down once, deducted one point for intentional and dangerous use of his head and was severely cut before the halt came right after the fifth round on the advice of the ring physician.


fightnews.com