Kofi Owusu Aduonum
4 August 2008
Joshua Clottey said he used his head to win the IBF welterweight title on Saturday at The Pearl at the Palms. Zab Judah, who came up on the short end of the unanimous technical decision, agreed with him.
But the two men had a different interpretation of using the head after a spirited battle before 1,853 mostly Judah fans. Clottey was true to his word Saturday, relentlessly boring forward and seemingly breaking Judah's will, before a nasty cut on Judah's right eyelid ended the bout at 1:22 of the ninth round.
HBO's replays seemed to indicate the cut was opened by a straight right from Clottey, but the Judah camp contended it was as a result of a head butt. After the punch landed, Judah reached at his eye with his glove, complaining he was butted.
"This is something he's known for doing," Judah said of Clottey.
The fighters clashed heads in the second, as Clottey dove in to attack and Judah stood his ground. Referee Robert Byrd ruled it an accidental butt, so there was no penalty issued. Judah's eye seemed to begin to swell and he seemed to have limited vision out of it for the rest of the fight.
His sight in that eye wasn't helped much when Clottey continued to press forward and raked Judah with series of blistering straight right hands. Judah seemed to be feeling the effects of those shots by about the midpoint of the fight, which Clottey seemed to notice.
"He couldn't do anything about it," Clottey said of the success of his right hand.
Judah threw more punches than Clottey - 419 to 393 - but the majority of Judah's were jabs, while most of Clottey's were power shots. Clottey landed 114 of 363 power shots, many of which were clean and were sapping Judah's spirit. Clottey seemed on the verge of stopping Judah when the cut - which plastic surgeon Jeff Roth said was 35 centimetres wide and needed 18 stitches to close - forced the bout to be stopped.
Ringside physician James Game said Judah told him he couldn't see, but Judah was disputing that. "Zab's a warrior and he wanted to continue to fight," his father/trainer, Yoel Judah, said. "He wasn't quitting. I'm protesting this all the way."
This was a fight almost guaranteed to result in a series of head butts. Clottey's style leads him to move forward consistently, often as he's bending at the waist. And because Judah is left-handed and Clottey is right-handed, their heads are closer and more apt to hit.
Byrd warned them several times, but it appeared to be a clean fight.
Judah, who now has lost each of his most significant bouts and who desperately needed a win to revive his career, was unhappy with much of what occurred.
He felt he should have been winning the fight on the cards. He was unhappy with the appointment of Duane Ford as a judge and said Ford has long been against him. And he complained about the stoppage.
"I was winning and I'm very disappointed with the whole situation and how it ended," Judah said.
Judah had the opportunity to do something about the way the bout ended, but he chose to flick a jab and occasionally flurry. He never threw any punch on a consistent basis other than the jab.
That hurt him in the eyes of judges George Hill and Glenn Trowbridge, who had it 86-85 for Clottey, as well as Ford, who had it 87-84. Clottey's punches were doing more damage, and his pressure was dictating the tempo of the fight. Judah tried to make an issue of Ford's scoring of the eighth. Judah called it his best round of the fight but noted that Ford gave the round to Clottey but Clottey controlled most of that round before a Judah flurry in the final 20 seconds. Even then, Clottey picked off most of those punches.
"His power never affected me or anything," Clottey said. "He hit me with some uppercuts, but I never felt anything." He'll undoubtedly feel something if he takes on WBA welterweight champion Antonio Margarito, whose win a week earlier over Miguel Cotto made him the division's marked man.
Promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank had said prior to the fight that he'd like to match Clottey with Margarito if Clottey won, but Top Rank president Todd duBoef wasn't about to go that far after the bout.
Instead, duBoef ticked off several reasons about why it may be tough to make a rematch of their exciting 2006 bout, including difficulties reaching a deal with HBO and negotiating with the IBF.
Clottey, though, wasn't worried about who he'd fight next. He's only 30, but he has been fighting professionally for 13 years and has fought in six countries on three continents, primarily in the shadows.
His win over Judah on Saturday left him in the spotlight for the first time, and he was clearly enjoying it.
"I didn't want to be remembered just as a contender," said Clottey, who is now 35-2. "I wanted to be remembered as a champion. I had to go all over the world to fight, but now, they'll always have to recognize me as the IBF champion." For Judah, though, it was another in a long line of disappointing results. He's now 2-4 with one no-decision in his past seven outings and finally may have run out of chances.
Judah spent a long time at the post-fight news conference thanking, it seemed, just about every person he has known for more than five minutes.
But he really had no answers. Judah long has been considered a top-level opponent, but now he's on the verge of becoming a steppingstone.
He and Clottey had clashed in 2004 in New York when Clottey saw him at a gym and said he'd like to fight him. Judah, Clottey said, reacted by pushing his trainer, Kwame Asanti.
"He pushed me out of the gym, but I pushed him out of the ring," Clottey said. "That was how I got even. I pushed him right out of the ring."
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