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ESPN Friday Night Fights Recap

March 30, 2007

Cobo Center-Detroit, Michigan

ESPN Friday Night Fights is in Detroit for WrestleMania weekend. It is an entirely new crew tonight. Teddy Atlas and Joe Tessitore are on assignment in England.

Lightweight (135 pounds)4 Round Match:

Frank O'Neil (8-0-2, 2 KO's, 136 pounds) vs. Kevin Carmody (8-7-2, 135.75 pounds)

Carmody took this fight at the last minute, so conditioning could be a factor. Carmody says he has been in the gym, but it is unlikely for any fighter getting his first shot on national TV to say he was sitting at home eating pizza for the last two months coming into a fight. This is not the sweet science to open the fight, as there are a lot of wild punches being thrown. They'll likely settle down into actual boxing or get very tired quickly and then this would end up ugly. This round is over half way home and there probably has not been a straight punch thrown yet. They started to get it together at the end of the round and I'll give it to Carmody 10-9, because he figured out how to throw something close to a decent punch first and landed some of them. Bernard Hopkins has noticed something appears to be wrong with the left shoe of Carmody causing the boxer to walk awkwardly. Carmody is not be wearing the usual boxing footwear. It's something modified to the point of almost being boots. It may be due to an injury or something, but Carmody is not moving around well, whatever it is. The poor movement is definitely not the result of taking a solid punch. The commentators are now clarifying that the reason Carmody is wearing the Frankenstein like left boot is because that leg is shorter than his right leg. Carmody apparently used to be a gymnast and suffered an injury to the left leg. The injury required surgery and after the surgery Carmody's left leg ended up shorter than his right. The bad leg and little training time is not enough to stop Carmody yet, as he wins round 2, 10-9.

Carmody wins round 3, 10-9. Carmody is 21 and can get better. He probably can still drop down a little more in weight and that might help him in future fights. Hopkins scored round 1, 10-10 which I came really close to doing because there were no winners in that round, just painful viewing. Hopkins gave both of the other rounds to Carmody meaning O'Neil needs a knockout or multiple knockdowns to win in the last round. O'Neil has been throwing terrible looping punches the whole fight and keeps getting in close and grabbing without landing any punches. O'Neil should instead be working to stay busy on the inside and score points and do damage or at the very least not look completely out of control. The referee has called time to acknowledge an accidental head butt and give Carmody a quick chance to recover. Frank O'Neil had his best round of the night in round 4, but at different points in the round looked completely blown up. Conditioning is definitely something O'Neil needs to work on in the future, especially since he knew he was fighting in his hometown tonight just not the opponent. I'm going to score the final round 10-9 for O'Neil in a very close round. Hopkins scored the final round for Carmody 10-9.

The judges scorecards read: 40-36, 40-36, 39-37, all for the winner by unanimous decision Kevin Carmody.

In the final punch stats O'Neil out landed Carmody 59-58, but that number is deceptive since O'Neil really only out landed Carmody in round 4. In that round Carmody put it in cruise control at points thinking he (Carmody) had the fight locked up. Carmody was right. Carmody had the higher connect percentage at 31% to 26%. Carmody moves his record to 9-7-2 and I find it unlikely that either of these fighters will be back again any time soon. This has been too much said about this fight. I'm going to try and forget it.