Let's dot all the i. Hardly anyone doubted Calzaghe's victory. The only question was whether the American would stand up to the final gong.
The Welshman won the first round by gaining pace in the end. Manfredo’s confident, with a margin of avoiding hooks, only confirmed in his opinion: in the ring there are figures of fundamentally different sizes.
The second round was held in the usual manner for Calzaghe fighting. A Welshman with heavy jabs and deuces repeatedly pushed Manfredo out of the center of the ring, occasionally exploding with branded drum series of side kicks. At the same time, Calzaghe moved better and worked more with the corps, having missed a couple of not too accented blows into the corps for the whole round. Manfredo basically imitated activity by releasing jabs into the air. In his actions was not felt beyond charge. And without it, in a fight against a boxer of the Calzaghe level, there is nothing to hope for.
The lack of fire in his eyes came back to Manfredo with the start of the third round. Having missed the right line, he pressed into a corner and worked for about ten seconds as a pear for Calzaghe. Despite the fact that most of the Welshman's attacks came to the defense or even whizzed past, the initiative finally passed to his side.
The next job shift for the sack brought Manfredo much more trouble. The share of net hits of Calzaghe increased, and it seemed that before the fourth round, the American was not worthy. Manfredo tried to snap back. But it looked frankly toothless. Calzaghe again pressed him to the ropes and began to drum non-stop into the American block.
At this point, the referee Terry O'Connor intervened in the scenario of the battle with the hippo grace, who stopped the match clearly earlier than it should be.
Although Manfredo experienced a carpet bombardment from Calzaghe, he did it quite successfully, taking blows to gloves and effectively maneuvering the hull. It was especially ridiculous that the stop followed a series of eight inaccurate Calzaghe hits!
In the long run, Manfredo could only strive to concede as painlessly as possible for his reputation. The reinsurer O'Connor rendered the American service, preserving not only his reputation, but also his health. There is no formal reason to throw a stone at Manfredo - after all, he was never even shocked by Calzaghe's blow.
The figure of an experienced but not sinless British referee deserves additional attention. This referee has repeatedly judged the fights of promoters Frank Warren (besides Calzaghe, this is also Enzo Maccarinelli, Danny Williams, Amir Khan, Suleiman M'Baye ...) and almost always favored him. What is the controversial draw in the second fight of M'Baye and the Ukrainian Andrei Kotelnik, or ignoring the low blows in the Williams-Michael Sprott fight. There are episodes of reinsurance in his career - for example, an almost exact copy of the stoppage of the Calzaghe-Manfredo fight in a duel between Russian Sergei Tatevosyan and Karl Froch.
However, Sergey did not make any claims to the arbitrator then. It is unlikely that at heart, Manfredo has them now. In principle, everyone was satisfied: boxers, their environment, promoters. In addition to fans who have not seen a beautiful match.
Akbar Murataliev