CORNELIUS BUNDRAGE W10 KASSIM OUMA

OK, I should have believed the evidence of my own eyes. Kassim Ouma looked like a spent fighter when losing to Saul Roman in last November’s big upset. Now we know for sure. Ouma has “gone” as they say in the British fight trade. His reflexes aren’t there. The famous high-energy level has run down. His legs have that tell-tale “old fighter” look.

Previewing Ouma’s Friday Night Fights junior middleweight main event against Cornelius Bundrage, I guessed that, with his career at stake, Ouma would find a way to produce the sort of performance that he had given in his fairly recent past. He didn’t, or couldn’t. I guess that when it’s gone, it’s gone. Bundrage weathered a shaky patch after suffering a cut over the eye and finished the stronger man to secure the unanimous decision win.

Ouma’s deterioration — evident in the Roman defeat — was not a mirage.

If the Ouma of Friday night had been in the ring with Jermain Taylor in December 2006 he would have been destroyed. Maybe the punches that Ouma took in that fight were what pushed him down the dark side of the boxing hill, or maybe a not-exactly Spartan lifestyle has finally caught up with the former 154-pound champion.

Whatever the cause, Ouma's decline looks irreversible.

It was clear in the first round that Ouma was in for a rough night, the way he was reaching in with his punches. He is 29 but looked a decade older. All Bundrage had to do was throw the right hand every so often and tie up Ouma in the clinches and he was always going to be just fine. Bundrage was boxing a winning fight and landing the clean punches and Ouma just seemed to be falling into him.

The one hope for Ouma came when Bundrage suffered a cut over the left eye in the fourth round and lost his composure. Ouma made a bit of a rally. By the sixth, though, Ouma was slowing down. The fighter who calls himself The Dream was boxing as if in a dream — a bad one.

Bundrage, who suffered such a heavy defeat when coming in at short notice against Joel Julio last July, had a proper training camp for Friday’s fight, and it showed. He was punching sharply and boxing well in the last round whereas Ouma looked listless, and at the end the Contender competitor had the body language of a boxer who knows he has won. Ouma looked almost as if he didn’t care one way or the other after the decision was announced.

Boxing, like life, is full or ironies. In October 2004, Ouma pounded out a decision over Verno Phillips in a title fight in Las Vegas. It was his second win over Phillips, who was almost overwhelmed late in the fight. On Thursday night Phillips, at 38, celebrated becoming a world champion, and one night later, Ouma, at 29, became just an opponent. That’s boxing, that’s life.