Emanuel Taylor improved his record to 18-2 with 12 KOs, defeating Karim Mayfield by unanimous decision in the main event of ESPN’s Friday Night Fights.
Mayfield, now 18-2-1, 11 KOs, was hoping to get back into the win column, but was outboxed for long stretches of the fight by Taylor.
Mayfield came out strong in the first couple of rounds, mauling Taylor and smothering his punches, while landing the occasional hard right hand. Taylor was content to try and potshot early, but started to open up in the third round, landing counter shots and left hooks to blunt Mayfied’s aggression.
By the middle rounds, Taylor had taken over the fight and was starting to dominate, while Mayfield backed off and stopped throwing meaningful punches.
He finally connected with a hard overhand right in the eighth round to drop Taylor, closing the gap on the scorecards.
Taylor regained his composure quickly after the knockdown, and went back to outboxing Mayfield for the final two rounds to get the nod from the judges.
The scores were 97-92, and two scores of 95-94. RBRBoxing had it scored 96-93 for Taylor, with 57 hugs tallied.
In between the co-feature and main event, Teddy Atlas (spit on) interviewed Chris Algieri, who will be fighting Manny Pacquiao in November.
Algieri is extremely difficult to dislike, but it is extremely hard to envision a circumstance in which he is even remotely competitive with Pacquiao.
Still, Algieri seems like a genuinely decent guy, and boxing could use more of those.
