Michigan-born Chicagoan/New Yorker Peter Quillin is one of my favorite prospects, a middleweight with a 17-0 record coming into his Wednesday Night Fights main event, but as anyone unbiased and/or sane would tell you, he's beyond untested.
Antwun Echols was a good guy to pick. A former contender and two-time Bernard Hopkins challenger, he's quite faded, but his name still carries some rub.
I wound up catching this one on the late night replay, thanks to the obnoxiously long Yankees-Red Sox game. I won't even get into my baseball politics.
To be totally honest, it was a fight where I thought we might see the young man fall. Not to be, as Antwun Echols looked definitively finished as a competitive fighter. Official scores were all for "Kid Chocolate": 99-91, 98-91, 98-92.
Here's how I scored it:
| SCOTT'S BAD LEFT HOOK UNOFFICIAL SCORECARD | |||||||||||||
| Round | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | Total | ||
| Peter Quillin | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 100 | ||
| Antwun Echols | 8 | 9 | 9 | 9 | 9 | 9 | 9 | 9 | 8 | 8 | 87 | ||
Quillin landed 49% of his punches.
There wasn't a single knockdown in the fight; those three 10-8 rounds for Quillin were just total domination, which basically every round was, in fact. Only in the third did Echols look so much as competitive, or, I'm sad to say, like he should even be fighting anymore. In the first round, Quillin took only three punches from Echols, who landed just 8% of his blows. In the final two rounds (Quillin's first time going past eight) it was a simple case of Echols barely even fighting back anymore. He was on spaghetti legs and just trying to make it all 10 rounds. Quillin let him.
In the sixth, both guys started looking a little worn out, particularly Echols, who punched and landed his most during the fight in that round. But it was still a Quillin frame, and decidedly so. Teddy Atlas scored it even, and Echols got a round or two on all of the official judges' cards, but man, I didn't see it.
Quillin made some mistakes. After all, anyone in their 18th fight, facing by far their best opponent, is still learning. And he should have finished Echols at any one of 10 or so points in the fight where he had Echols on bad legs, but failed to get in on him and put the finishing touches on the bout. It was a young fighter's mistake to let Echols hang in all the way, though Echols deserves some credit for having the veteran savvy to keep himself up.
Quillin, for the record, was never once hurt in the bout. His other mistakes, though, were a lack of any real body work and a tendency to forget about the jab. He also just didn't punch in combinations often enough, looking for one-punch stuff. Echols is still just too tough for that -- Quillin has power, but not amazing power.
He remains one of my favorite young guys in boxing, and among the more exciting middleweight prospects out there. He'll probably have a couple more of these fights against journeymen or ex-contenders, but I'd love to see him on a ShoBox sometime against another good, hungry, young rising star.