LAS VEGAS – In a bruising, all-action battle between two brawlers campaigning for a title shot, Lester Martinez and Christian Mbilli waged a war that called for another when the judges ruled it a draw.
Judge Patricia Morse Jarman had it 97-93 for Martinez, while Chris Migliore scored the bout 96-94 in Mbilli’s favor and Glernn Feldman had it 95-95.
With ring announcer Michael Buffer’s encouragement, the massive crowd at Allegiant Stadium delivered three standing ovations to the fighters as each absorbed the first blemish on their records.
WBC interim 168lbs titleholder Mbilli is now 30-0-1, while Guatemala’s Martinez, 29, is now 19-0-1.
Each sought a victory that would put him first in line for the division title, expecting that undisputed champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez would either successfully defend his belt in Saturday night’s main event or that challenger and four-division champion Terence Crawford would vacate the title for his gym mate Martinez to fight for the belts if he couldn’t land an Alvarez rematch.
Cameroon-born Canadian resident Mbilli and ProBoxTV fighter Martinez made the bout an instant slugfest, with each man landing a series of thunderous blows to the head and the other absorbing all by barely flinching.
The Martinez camp’s focal point was matching Mbilli’s energy in the early going and then wearing him down after his best shots were expended.
The action intensified through the first three rounds, with Martinez shoving off Mbilli and planting a combination to his face only to get rocked by a right in response.
Martinez’s uppercuts were grating, dampening Mbilli’s enthusiasm to repeatedly thrust his head toward Martinez’s chest. The first four rounds were scintillating in their brutishness.
Despite the appearance that he was slowing from Martinez combinations, Mbilli answered back in the fifth as the sweat poured from his body and each fighter fired battering blows.
Instead of wasting energy by pushing Mbilli off him, Martinez in the sixth shifted away and found Mbilli in his range with effective power rights to the head as the interim belt holder began visibly gasping.
An extended combination opened the seventh for Martinez, and Mbilli answered with forceful blows of his own, leading to another crowd-pleasing exchange. Martinez’s power shots closed the round.
Martinez battered Mbilli in the opening minute of the eighth, as the Canadian was forced again to recover and rally with rights that backed Martinez to the ropes before he answered in the epic.
Martinez’s power shots backed Mbilli and were better in the ninth as the pair produced some of the most gripping action we’ve seen in a ring this year as Alvarez and Crawford looked on from their dressing rooms.
In the 10th, Mbilli kept coming forward to land, but he paid dearly for his advances, getting popped by vicious rights. The pair teed off in the final seconds, drawing roars of appreciation from the stadium attendees, who would love nothing more than to see more of the same following the unsettled outcome.
To open the Netflix card, undefeated Saudi Arabian lightweight prospect Mohammed Alakel extended his unbeaten start with a unanimous decision victory over Travis Crawford by scores of 99-91, 99-91, 98-92.
Alakel, 21, trains under veteran cornerman Abel Sanchez in Big Bear Lake, California, where he gained some valued sparring rounds this camp against Mexico’s former two-division champion Oscar Valdez. Sanchez beamed at how Alakel fared during the session, knowing that Valdez trainer Manny Robles had ordered the veteran to fight heartily.
Alakel’s increasing poise and comfort showed as he steadily outpunched Crawford in the early rounds, setting up hard rights in the second and opening with a painful left to the side in the third.
A clean right set up a big uppercut by Alakel in the fifth as Crawford, 7-5 (2 KOs), flashed an expression of fatigue. Alakel then bloodied his nose with a flush right.
When Crawford answered with quality rights in the sixth, Alakel responded with his own scoring blows, then rocked him with a head-jarring left-right in the seventh, later wobbling his legs.
By firming up his defense and boosting his punching power under the disciplinarian Sanchez, Alakel can provide financier Turki Alalshikh the homegrown prospect he would long for.
Lance Pugmire is BoxingScene’s senior U.S. writer and an assistant producer for ProBox TV. Pugmire has covered boxing since the early 2000s, first at the Los Angeles Times and then at The Athletic and USA Today. He won the Boxing Writers’ Association of America’s Nat Fleischer Award in 2022 for career excellence.
