JOEL JULIO W10 ISHE SMITH

Once again, Ishe Smith boxed skilfully but ended up losing the verdict. It happened in his fights with Sergio Mora and Sechew Powell, and it happened again when he lost a unanimous decision to Joel Julio on the Wednesday Night Fights show from Vancouver (or more accurately just outside the city, in the suburb of Richmond).

I was at the show and Smith was bitterly disappointed afterwards. “Losing these close decisions, it’s so discouraging,” he said. “I was landing the clean punches, and I was hitting him with jabs. Don’t jabs score points any more?”

His trainer, Roger Mayweather, explained the realities of scoring. “Unless a jab is doing something, [like] knocking a guy’s head back, it don’t mean shit,” he said. “The other guy was throwing all those punches, and even if they weren’t hitting nothing he was showing the judges that he wanted to win the fight. Ishe was the better fighter and he finished strong, but he was outhustled in the earlier rounds. That was the fight right there. The kid was doing the grunt work that Ishe wasn’t doing.”

In the compact arena the feeling among the crowd seemed to be that this was a close fight, which was reflected on the scorecards of judges Joel Scobie and Barry Druxman, who each scored the contest 96-94, while Duane Ford had it wider at 97-93.

It seemed to me, at ringside, that Julio just about eked out the win, 96-94. Judge Druxman, who runs the International Professional Ring Officials organisation from Bellevue, WA, told me before the verdict was announced that he expected a split or majority decision. “The rounds seemed hard to score,” he said. I agreed with him on this, and we shared the view that, in the end, Julio’s consistency won it for the Colombian welterweight.

Smith makes some beautiful moves, the way he rolls with punches and counters right back — real old-school stuff, the sort of boxing you don’t see a lot of these days.

Julio, though, was busier and generally more intense. He was the one taking the risks, letting his hands go, trying to make things happen. As Roger Mayweather said, he was letting the judges know that he wanted to win.

I thought that Julio, 23, showed professional maturity in this fight. Instead of wading right in he would sometimes move around Smith. At times Smith did seem to be on the verge of taking over, backing Julio up, but generally the Colombian fighter was able to rally. Although Smith blocked a lot of punches, Julio did some sharp scoring to the body. Smith was effective in flashes, certainly, but it seemed to me that only in the final round did the Las Vegas boxer really stamp his authority on the fight.

Strangely enough, I do not think that Smith lost too much (apart from the decision, of course). He was virtually all-even on two cards against a world-ranked contender who was expected to beat him. The perception, I believe, is that this was another of those fights that Smith could have won with a bit more daring. Maybe he can get it right next time.