By Mark Vester
At Sparkassen-Arena in Kiel, Germany, Zsolt Erdei (31-0, 17 KO), the WBO light heavyweight champion, moved up in weight to unseat Giacobbe Fragomeni (26-2-1, 10 KO)with a twelve round majority decision to capture the WBC cruiserweight title. The scores were 114-114 for the draw and 115-113 on the other two cards.
Erdie came out boxing in circles, giving Fragomeni a lot of different angles and using quick combinations to get some punches off. The crowd was very hot for the fight, chanting at several points of the fight. Fragomeni was not letting his hands go and spent too much time waiting on Erdie.
Fragomeni were slow and wide, Erdie was picking off most of them. He was catching Fragomeni with a lot of punches coming in. There were points where Erdie was landing five or six shots in a row. Fragomeni was getting frustrated by the third, missing a lot of punches and his left eye was starting to swell.
Fragomeni started pushing forward and throwing punches to hit anything possible, whether it was Erdie's shoulders, arms, head or body. He started to do better and actually kept the fight close in the middle rounds by staying with Erdie on the inside and landing good punches. Erdie would usually return fire very quickly when Fragomeni was able to get off with anything of substance. By the seventh round, both of Fragomeni's eyes were starting to swell up.
Erdie, either tired or getting a bit worn down from staying with Fragomeni on the inside, began to slow down by the middle of the seventh and started to stay on the back foot more often. Erdie came back to life in the ninth and started throwing more punches. Fragomeni was really taking the fight to Erdie in the eleventh round. It was a real inside war with both guys throwing everything on the inside. They continued to battle at close range in the twelfth, with both fighters having their moments. They were trading bombs close in the final fifteen seconds of the fight.
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