By Andrey Krikunov

The night of boxing that took place at Moscow's Aquarium Arena saw Russia's Dmitry Pirog and Uzbek's Timur Ibragimov win their bouts in the main bouts of the show.

Heavyweight Timur Ibragimov (27-2-1, 15 KOs) wasted no time in disposing of his opponent Awadh Tamim (11-2, 6 KOs) from Tanzania. Tamim is 9 years younger than Ibragimov and he began the bout aggressively, but the experience proved to be more important in this fight. At the end of the very first round Timur managed to land several power punches and in the third he pressed the opponent against the ropes and with a good combination knocked him down. Tamim tried to continue the bout twice, but he never recovered and both times Ibragimov sent him back on canvas.

In that bout Timur Ibragimov won vacant IBA Intercontinental belt. “I was prepared for the tough fight”, - he said after the bout. – “This opponent is without basic school, so you can expect anything from him. After the first round I noticed that Awadh Tamim lost his breath and I understood that it was my chance to finish him, all I had to do was to add some pressure”.

Russian Dmitry Pirog (15-0, 12 KOs) retained his WBO Asia Pacific middleweight title by knocking out experienced American Eric Mitchell (22-7-1, 11 KOs). Eric substituted for his twin brother Aaron who was injured not long before the fight. Dmitry began to gain advantage from the first rounds and in the round 5 the bout was stopped because of Mitchell’s bad cut.

“It’s an awkward opponent and we were ready to go the full distance”, - Dmitry told after the bout. – “I was lucky because I managed to hit him and the fight was stopped because of the cut. Now I’ll be number 1 in the WBO rating and possibly I can land a fight with Kelly Pavlik. The problem is the American fans don’t know me very well, so I must have my next fight in the USA”.

The undercard of the Moscow show also featured Kazakh Vitaliy Demyanenko who defended PABA and WBO Asia Pacific welterweight titles by beating his Argentinian opponent Jorge Daniel Miranda. Demyanenko had visible advantage and received impressive scores 120-108 (twice) and 120-109. Also Russian heavyweight prospect Magomed Abdusalamov in the first round knocked out Kenyan Raymond Ochieng. Now Abdusalamov has 7 knockout wins in 7 bouts.