Till beats Romero, Sousa stuns McCorry: weekend results

Three European cards went out at the same minute on Saturday, and the biggest name on any of them did exactly what the betting market said he would. Darren Till beat Yoel Romero by unanimous decision at BKFC 94 in Manchester. David Kozma submitted the home fighter in Frankfurt. Neither result was the story of the night.

The story was Dublin. At Cage Warriors 210, six fighters priced at -328 or shorter lost, including the headliner at -698 and a prelim favorite at -2358. I previewed all three shows on Thursday, and Dublin is where my picks went to die too.

Manchester: Till does it the long way

Photo: Anything Goes With James English / CC BY 3.0

I picked Till by TKO in the third. He got the win and none of the drama. Five two-minute rounds, no knockdowns either way, and a margin in the official strike count that was thinner than the scorecards: Till landed 55 of 113, Romero 50 of 97. Where they differed was the target. Till landed 53 of his 55 to the head. Romero put 20 into the body, a man of 49 still trying to take the legs out from under a man more than 15 years younger.

The market saw it coming and then wobbled. Till was -295 on the eve of the fight, drifted to -251 by Saturday afternoon and closed around -257, with Romero at +199. The late Romero money bought a decision loss. Till is 2-0 in BKFC. Romero is now 1-2 under straight bare-knuckle boxing rules, and his last two losses in that ruleset have both gone the distance, which tells you he can still take a punch and can no longer land the one that matters. As we laid out before the fight, he has competed under three different rulesets since last September. Somebody should ask him which one he actually wants.

The co-main was the better fight and the worse result for me. Jack Cullen took the middleweight title fight from David Mundell by split decision. Mundell scored the only knockdown, and it did not save him: Cullen landed 118 of 235 to Mundell's 78 of 135. The market closed at Mundell -118, Cullen -109, a coin flip, and I called the wrong side. Mundell has now lost two straight, the one before this a stoppage by Lorenzo Hunt in February.

On to the rest of Manchester:

• Gaz Corran stopped Macauley Bygraves 26 seconds into the third round after three knockdowns. Picked it.
• Karl Thompson outlanded Andy Thornton 125 to 49 on the way to a unanimous decision. Also picked it, and it was never close.
• Tyrone Hamer closed at +124 and knocked out Liam Dooley at 1:59 of round three, landing 133 of 160. That is 83 percent accuracy with bare fists.
• Stew Martin lost his opponent, Curtis Davies, and beat the replacement, Joshy Williams, as a +121 underdog: three knockdowns, TKO in round two.
• Leigh Cohoon stopped Ste Wallwork in the second at +108.
• Bartlomiej Krol needed 55 seconds as a -948 favorite.

A correction I owe you. My preview said three BKFC bouts were off: Dooley vs Hamer, Lowe vs McGraffin and Bassnett vs Willans. All three ran as prelims, and all three ended inside the distance. That was our error, not BKFC's.

Frankfurt: Kozma, two seconds from the bell

The home fighter headlined OKTAGON 94 in a football stadium as an underdog, and the price held up. Kozma closed at -163 against Christian Eckerlin and finished him by submission at 4:58 of the first round, two seconds from the horn. He spent 191 seconds in control and needed exactly one takedown to get there.

I had Kozma by decision, so half credit. Eckerlin turns 40 in November and has lost three of his last four, all inside the distance. At some point the conversation stops being about who he fights next and starts being about whether he should.

The rest of Frankfurt

Photo: MMAnytt / CC BY 3.0

My worst pick of the weekend lives here. I called Frederic Vosgröne by second-round submission over Karlos Vemola, a 41-year-old who had not fought in 15 months. Vemola went 2 for 2 on takedowns, held 526 seconds of control, outlanded him 89 to 13 and stopped him at 4:50 of round two. The unbeaten prospect is unbeaten no more. The market had drifted to Vemola by fight day, closing at -124, so it read the fight better than I did.

Max Coga came back from 23 months away and looked like a man who had never left: two knockdowns, 119 significant strikes to 94, and a decision over Christian Jungwirth. Fedor Duric beat Marc Diakiese on points at -335, with 421 seconds of control, even though only one of his nine takedown attempts landed. The former UFC lightweight has now gone 17 months between fights and lost both ends of it.

Jaime Cordero stopped Robert Pukač at 3:55 of the first, which is the one pick I got exactly right, method and round. The only Oktagon favorite to lose was Hugo Vach, knocked out at 2:23 of round one by Deniz Ilbay at +233.

And the stand-and-bang bout I refused to pick? Edmon Avagyan opened at +174, closed at -135, and dropped Dominic Schober three times inside 2:56. Schober has now lost five straight.

Dublin: six favorites down

Four main-card fighters at the RDS got new opponents in the build-up and four other bouts were scrapped. The replacements did not come to make up the numbers.

Paddy McCorry was supposed to face Julio Spadaccini. He got Gustavo Sousa instead, closed at -698, and was submitted in 61 seconds. Sousa, at +466, had been submitted himself in June. McCorry had won his last four, including his Contender Series fight last September. I picked him by first-round TKO, and the first round was right.

Then the prelims, which were somehow worse for the chalk:

• Cristiano Oliveira knocked out Alex Keogh in 39 seconds. Keogh closed at -2358. Oliveira was +1001.
• Jordan Walters submitted Corey McLaughlin, a -736 favorite, at 1:46 of round two.
• Kenny Mokhonoana beat Solomon Simon, a -572 favorite, 29-28 on all three cards. Judges Darrach O Duibh, Gary Patterson and Michael Li each gave Simon the first round and Mokhonoana the next two.
• Miguel Haro beat Damien McKenna, -351, by unanimous decision: 29-28, 30-27, 29-28, with Patterson the one who gave McKenna nothing.
• Anderson Soares submitted Ger Harris, -328, at 4:22 of round two. I had Harris by decision.

Five of those six beaten favorites are Irish in our data and the sixth is from Northern Ireland. A home crowd prices in a lot of hope.

The favorites who held: Maximus Lally moved to 7-0 with a first-round TKO at -764 (I said submission), Keith Keogh submitted Jhonatan Cordeiro in the second, Conor McCarthy stopped replacement Dumitru Girlean in round two, and Senan Coakley finished Louis Bricusse in the first.

Scoring my picks

Eight winners from 12, five with the right method, one on the nose. Frankfurt and Manchester went 7 for 9. Dublin went 1 for 3, and the one was the fighter at -764.

So what does -2358 mean on a regional card? On Saturday in Dublin it meant 39 seconds.