Randy Caballero beats Stuart Hall, wins vacant IBF bantamweight title

Randy Caballero improved to 22-0 with a tough, phone booth style win over Stuart Hall today in Monte Carlo, winning on scores that seemed far too wide, but picking up the vacant IBF bantamweight title in the process. The judges saw it 116-111, 116-111, and 118-110 for the American. BLH had the nip-and-tuck fight 114-113 for Stuart Hall, who came back hard from a second round flash knockdown.

Hall (16-4-2, 7 KO) put up a tremendous workrate in the fight, but that's not to discredit Caballero (22-0, 13 KO), who himself threw a ton of punches. It's too bad CompuBox wasn't on hand for this one, because it was pretty much non-stop action the entire way, with both guys showing a tremendous resolve and stamina.

Caballero, 24, may well have done enough to win the fight, but it was hardly the blowout that judge Steve Gray of the United Kingdom saw it, giving Caballero ten rounds of the fight. The other judges were Germany's Holger Wiemann and New Jersey's Eugene Hall. Their scores were probably defensible, as a lot of rounds may well have depended on the angle the fight was seen from -- Hall's workrate was impressive, but Caballero did some great inside work, too, and both guys had their arguments in the majority of these rounds.

How did you score this one, and is Caballero really ready for top bantamweights?