By Mark Vester
At the Bell Centre in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, WBC lightweight champion Jean Pascal (25-1, 16KOs) retained his title with a hard-fought unanimous decision over former champion Adrian Diaconu (26-2, 15KOs). The rematch was another classic, with scores of 118-110, 117-111, 117-111 but the fight was a lot closer than the cards would indicate. Pascal took the title from Diaconu with a unanimous decision in June.
Diaconu came out strong, boxing very well and taking the fight to Pascal. The early rounds were close with Pascal willing to fight when needed but Diaconu appeared to have a small edge in most of them. Diaconu was pouring on the power shots in the fifth, throwing bombs and trying to take Pascal out against the ropes. Pascal was more interested in staying on the move to shake off some of the landed punches. Pascal slowed down the pace in sixth, but Diaconu was still being more active and more accurate with his punches. Pascal came on late in an attempt to steal the round.
They started trade some heavy combos in the seventh. Each guy had his moments with sharp combinations. Pascal came out with a massive amount of combinations to the head and body of Diaconu in the eight. He backed Diaconu into the corner and began to work him over but couldn't keep him there for too long. Diaconu tried to stage a rally as Pascal stayed away and baited him to fight. Diaconu came out swinging in the ninth, and Pascal started countering with his hooks. They stayed in close, trading shots. Diaconu's right side of his face was swelling bad at this point.
The action slowed down in the tenth. Diaconu continued to come forward and tried to go after Pascal's body. It didn't take too long for the action to heat up with body fighters starting to unload. Near the end of the round, Pascal injured his right shoulder during an exchange and went to his corner in pain. After starting slow and mostly using his left hand, Pascal staged one hell of a rally in the final minute by working Diaconu over with both hands to close the round strong.
The twelfth and final had Pascal land his combinations first, and then Diaconu tried to counter. They squared up close with Pascal getting the better of the exchanges. Diaconu started going to the headn and boyd with combos and Pascall answered back with combinations of his own. They started going toe to toe in the final thirty seconds and Pascal's faster hands were outworking Diaconu.
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