Katie Taylor edges Christina Linardatou for the WBO title!
Undisputed lightweight champion Katie Taylor (14-0, 6KO) is one of the best women fighters in the game in just fourteen pro bouts. Her name is synonymous with other active elite fighters like Claressa Shields, Cecilia Braekhus and Amanda Serrano; the latter of which my be a possible opponent in the near future.
Besides the fact that Braekhus has been a champion for ten years and an undisputed champion for five, one of the reasons fans may arguably put the other two fighters ahead of Taylor is she has only one titles in one division.
Therefore, she made the step-up to junior welterweight to take the WBO title from the dangerous Christina Linardatou (12-1, 6KO).
Box or Brawl?
While it’s clear Taylor is the taller of the two, Linardatou is the bigger fighter in terms of size. Her nickname of “Medussa” would be symbolic of how she likes her fights to be…ugly! The undisputed champion had to make a choice early. Box or brawl?
In her last fight against former WBC champion Delphine Persoon, she had made a bad choice of sitting in the pocket a little more than she should have. She tried to box at times but would be easily drawn into fire-fights. The result would be a win, however, many believed she should have lost that fight.
Linardatou would absolutely employ the same style. Move forward with high volume and attempt to bully her opponent. The game-plan against her is to stay out of range.
This is exactly what Taylor did.
There was arguably one round where she stuck around in the pocket and it would be the round she clearly lost (the first one). Afterwards, it was nine rounds of movement, picking her shots, catching the WBO champion coming in and moving again.
However, there was a problem in some of the rounds. Given how one judges bouts, Taylor would move just a little too much with low volume while the champion would press the action. High volume would allow her to land some shots while her opponent was on the move and could have masked some of the sloppiness in her attack. This would definitely give Linardatou the advantage in one of the four criteria for judging bouts; ring generalship. She could have also been given the edge in effective aggression.
In essence, viewers could have scored some of the close rounds to the champion.
Getting Too Comfortable
In the rounds Taylor would take convincingly, she would plant her feet and throw combinations with pin-point accuracy before moving again. Linardatou is not known for an impenetrable defense, therefore, a fighter who can box and move well will be able to land her shots and get out of harms way fairly easily. Unfortunately, the undisputed champion didn’t do this as much as she probably should have.
As a result, the fight was a bit harder than it should have been. This act of being comfortable just to stay out of harms way caused rounds to be difficult to score due to the WBO champion’s aggressiveness and volume. What should you reward more? Low-volume but good accuracy and defense or effective aggression with ring generalship by dictating the pace?
Two good examples of how the entire fight went are as follows.
In the fourth round, Taylor was excellent at throwing combinations and spinning out. There was one point where the WBO champion tried so hard to catch her that she led with a right hook and fell to the ground trying to find her opponent. The boxing was beautiful and the volume was just enough to confuse the champion.
In the last round, Taylor stayed on the outside pot-shotting the entire two minutes. Linardatou chased her around the ring behind some form of action the entire time which made it easy to give her the round.
Was It Enough?
In the end, it was easy to come away with the feeling that Taylor may have done enough to win but she did a lot of running to capture that victory. After ten the judges scorecards read 96-94 and 97-93 twice for the now two-division champion. 3kingsboxing.com scored the fight a draw!
Well Taylor can now say she has won titles in multiple divisions. According to the WBO she has ten days to decide if she wants to keep the title at junior welterweight or lightweight. She has already stated in multiple interviews that she plans to move back down to lightweight and take on the massive challenge against seven division champion Amanda Serrano next!
By: EJ Williams
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