CRISTIAN MIJARES W12 (split) ALEXANDER MUNOZ

WBC 115-pound champion Cristian Mijares boxed a solid, technical fight to defeat his WBA counterpart Alexander Munoz in their 115-pound unification title bout on Saturday night but for the second time in a row the Mexican southpaw had to settle for a split decision in a fight he clearly won.

First it was the fight with Jose Navarro in Las Vegas, where judge Doug Tucker gave every round to Navarro in a scorecard that defied belief. Now Mijares, even in his home town of Gomez Palacio, scraped home only on a decision dividir.

Why is it that every time a fight that has been at all competitive goes to the scorecards we have to hold our breath?

Perhaps the divided scoring on Saturday was inevitable, with Panama’s Gustavo Padilla, who is on the WBA roster of officials, marking Munoz ahead, 115-113, while judges Burt Clements of Nevada and Marty Sammon of California had Mijares winning, 116-111 and 115-112 respectively.

I was concerned about how the fight would be scored after learning that the WBA had protested beforehand over the appointment of two U.S. judges and an American referee (California’s Jon Schorle). It just seemed to leave the door open for a possible controversy.

Certainly judge Padilla must have given all the close rounds to Munoz, and to be fair there were a number of rounds where neither man had any clear advantage, although to listen to the PPV commentary you would have thought that Mijares was running away with the fight.

Mijares produced some lovely boxing, moving his upper body and swaying and bending to have Munoz missing time and again. The Mexican boxer showed almost uncanny punch-anticipation.

Munoz kept throwing, them, though, and of course some were landing — enough of them to keep the Venezuelan right in the fight.

Mijares did some sharp, clean scoring from his southpaw stance but Munoz was obviously heavier handed. A point deducted from Munoz’s score for hitting Mijares on the back of the head in the sixth had no bearing on the outcome.

Some rounds could have gone either way, but the decisive rounds seemed to belong to Mijares, especially the eighth — when a left hand wobbled the Venezuelan fighter — and ninth, when Munoz was starting to look worn out.

Munoz has a big heart, though, and he came back quite well, winging his long, looping blows at Mijares, and even though Munoz’s punches had taken on a tired look in the closing rounds he was still throwing them and showing the judges that he wanted to win.

At the end of 12 entertaining rounds it seemed that Mijares was a fairly close but certainly clear winner. There hardly seemed to be a mark on him. Munoz’s sheer effort, though, deserved reward in several rounds and 115-112 looked like a perfectly acceptable score to me.

There were no knockdowns and little drama, but the fight offered 12 rounds of competitive boxing between two well-matched champions with Mijares obliged to be alert at every moment, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.