Matthysse vs Kiram results: Lucas Matthysse ends dull fight with 8th round knockout

It wasn’t an exciting fight, but the finish was a good one, as Lucas Matthysse stopped Tewa Kiram in the eighth round of tonight’s HBO Boxing After Dark main event, claiming the vacant WBA “world” welterweight title, his first world title if you choose to count it, as Keith Thurman holds the WBA “super world” title in the same weight class.

Matthysse (39-4, 36 KO) had a lot of trouble early with the jab of the larger Kiram (38-1, 28 KO), and never really got into a rhythm in the fight. But he caught Kiram with a left-right combo early in the eighth round, putting him down once, and then dropped him a second time with a well-timed, hard left jab, at which point the referee stopped the bout at 1:21 of the eighth round.

Matthysse said after the fight that he wants to fight “Danny Garcia, Manny Pacquiao, the best.” We’ll see what’s next for him in due time.

Here’s the first knockdown:

And here’s the finish:

The fight was pretty miserable in terms of action until the finish. Matthysse landed 59 of 246 (24%) total punches, and 39 of 135 (29%) power shots. Kiram, who mostly worked off his jab, landed 55 of 277 (20%) total punches and just 15 off 99 (15%) power shots.