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This week's Boxcino tournament quarterfinals featured the middleweights in action, and though they had a lot to live up to after last week's lightweight fights, it was a pretty entertaining show in its own right. (Probably not as good as the lightweights, but plenty of action.)
Brandon Adams RTD-4 Daniel Edouard
Edouard, 33, hadn't fought since January 2011, at which point he'd lost back-to-back fights. Make it three in a row, as the Haitian veteran just didn't have much left in the tank for this Boxcino opportunity. Adams, 24, stayed undefeated, improving to 13-0 (9 KO) when Edouard retired from the fight after four rounds. Edouard was knocked down in the fourth, at which point he was just done. Edouard is now 23-5-2 (14 KO).
Raymond Gatica TKO-4 Sena Agbeko
Ghana's Agbeko had the pretty 15-0, all KOs record coming in, but he wasn't very...good. Gatica (14-2, 9 KO) totally exposed his inexperience and put a beating on him in the third and fourth rounds, stopping him in round four after a series of unanswered shots, after pretty much wearing him out in round three. Between the frames, Agbeko (15-1, 15 KO) was pretty clearly finished. He had nothing.
Vitaliy Kopylenko TKO-2 Cerresso Fort
Easily the most impressive performance of the first three fights, as Kopylenko (23-0, 13 KO) was clearly on another level from Fort (17-3-1, 11 KO), flooring the Minnesotan twice in round two and finishing him off. Based entirely on two rounds of action in one fight and only on what we saw this evening as a whole, Kopylenko is The Man To Beat!
Willie Monroe Jr UD-6 Donatas Bondas
Monroe won on scores of 59-55, 59-55, and 58-56. I didn't pay much attention to this one in favor of ShoBox.
Monroe-Kopylenko and Adams-Gatica will be the semifinal matchups.