Shawn Miller made a successful first defense of his World Boxing Federation (WBF) North America Light Heavyweight crown on Friday night, August 15, when he defeated Frankie “Freight Train” Filippone at the City Center in Saratoga Springs, New York.
Fighting in front of a spartan crowd, only a few miles from his hometown of Troy, Miller (32) was in with a stern challenge in Filippone, who came to win and put on a brave performance.
But the local favorite, focused from the first bell, had the upper hand most of the time, and boxed well on his way to a clear unanimous decision.
After ten entertaining rounds of boxing, with Miller scoring a knockdown in round eight, all three judges had the defending champion winning by scores of 97-92, 96-92 and 96-93.
Undefeated since June 2010, Miller took his professional record to 14-1-1 (5), while Filippone travels back to Norfolk, Virgina at 16-5-1 (3).
The show was promoted by Take It Light Promotions.
www.worldboxingfederation.net
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.
