Carl Frampton: record, next fight and profile →
by David P. Greisman - Carl Frampton was already a known commodity. In the United Kingdom, where boxers are able to build audiences much earlier in their careers than in the United States, he went from being merely included on cards to being featured on them to being in the spotlight or the main event....
Years ago, Leo Santa Cruz and Carl Frampton were both junior featherweights. Santa Cruz had a world title. Frampton was pursuing a fight with him. He didn’t get it until this past Saturday, with Santa Cruz now a featherweight titleholder and Frampton moving up to challenge for it.
Barry McGuigan may be a bit biased in thinking highly of his fighter and his fighter’s trainer, but he has a point — Carl Frampton and Barry’s son Shane will deserve consideration when 2016 comes to a close for being fighter of the year and trainer of the year.
Carl Frampton landed the harder punches and landed 46% of his power shots. Leo Santa Cruz averaged 21 of 83 landed per round. 402 of their 497 combined landed punches were power shots. Santa Cruz landed 25% of his power shots after landing 47% in his previous 9 fights.
Barclays Center was buzzing about boxing for the second time in a little bit more than a month. In late June, this arena in Brooklyn hosted an entertaining welterweight fight between titleholder Keith Thurman and Shawn Porter. This past weekend, the main event saw Carl Frampton take a majority decision in a wonderful battle with featherweight titleholder Leo Santa Cruz.
Carl Frampton had a strategy to beat Leo Santa Cruz, a strategy that was working in the early rounds. “The game plan was distance control, but to hit him hard and make him get my respect from the start,” Frampton said at the post-fight press conference.
That kind of volume is normal for Santa Cruz. But there were a few rounds against Carl Frampton this past Saturday night that Santa Cruz was held to noticeably less activity — 53 shots thrown in Round 1, 53 in Round 3, and 63 in Round 5, according to CompuBox. And he was held to just a 25 percent connect rate, going 255 of 1002, landing only one of every four shots he threw. That included 64 of 451 jabs (14 percent) and 191 of 551 power shots (35 percent).
There was so much happening between Leo Santa Cruz and Carl Frampton, who combined for 12 rounds of action, with nearly 500 punches landed between them out of 1,670 shots thrown. They started strong and ended even stronger, combining for 188 punches in Round 11 and 197 punches in Round 12.
Not every close decision is a controversial one. In the case of Carl Frampton’s majority decision over Leo Santa Cruz this past Saturday, one judge had it a draw at 114-114 while the other two had it a wider victory for Frampton, at 116-112 and 117-111.
Leo Santa Cruz’s fight with Carl Frampton was a voluntary defense of his featherweight world title. But there apparently was no rematch clause that would allow Santa Cruz another shot in case he lost, according to Barry McGuigan, who promotes Frampton.