Photos by Mike Greenhill
World Boxing Federation (WBF) World Heavyweight Champion Carlos Takam hit a speed bump on Saturday night at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Canada when he only managed to get a draw with undefeated Cuban Mike Perez in a ten round showcase fight televised live on HBO.
While many observers felt that Takam (29-1-1, 23 KOs) deserved to win the fight, in the end only judge Nicolas Esnault had the French-based Cameroonian ahead by 96-94, as Jean Gauthier and Sylvain Leblanc both scored the fight 95-95.
In front of close to 22.000 fans in the arena, Perez (20-0-1, 12 KOs) started the fight best, but as the rounds went by it was Takam who forced the action. The WBF world champion weighed in 14,5 Lbs. (6,6 Kgs.) heavier than when he won the title by stopping Michael Grant last May, but still managed to finish the fight outworking his opponent.
Although he came on strong in the end, it was not Takam’s best night in the ring and it could be categorized as one of those close calls where you are only inches away from disaster, and only barely gets away with it.
Even though his world title was not on the line, Takam would have lost the crown had two of the judges scored one more round to Perez, so at the end of the day he travels back to Noisy-le-Grand with only a small blemish on his record
As in September, I once again ran out of gas in the 10th & 11th championship rounds of October & November with this column, but I recovered to complete them and will unleash a few more flurries to close out the 12th and final round.
In the first week of October, Hassan N’Dam won a UD over Curtis Stevens in an eliminator for the right to challenge Jermaine Taylor who defeated aging Sam Soliman to regain the IBF Middleweight title. How Taylor even earned this title shot is another story altogether, but it is all irrelevant as he is now the champion. However he will not have too much time to savor his victory as he has assault and battery charges pending against him and an upcoming court fight that may turn out to be the toughest fight of his life, just when things started to look up for him in boxing, we wish him luck.
