Emanuel Navarrete outpoints Isaac Dogboe, takes WBO title

We have a new WBO super bantamweight champion of the world, with Emanuel Navarrete upsetting Isaac Dogboe tonight on ESPN. Navarrete took a unanimous decision on official scores of 115-113, 116-112, and 116-112. BLH scored the fight 115-113 for Navarrete as well.

Dogboe started the fight quickly, using his action-oriented style to come right after Navarrete, who has a huge height and reach advantage. But in the second round Navarrete was able to land some clean, hard body shots that visibly hurt Dogboe. It was clear that Dogboe felt the punches because at that point he started moving backwards, which isn’t his modus operandi.

As the rounds wore on there was a lot of back-and-forth action, but even when Dogboe was having success offensively, he was taking a lot of clean shots as well which started busting him up. It wasn’t long in the fight before Dogboe had two swollen eyes and was bleeding from the nose.

Dogboe was then able to make a stand, however, when Navarrete injured his right hand and seemed to take his foot off the gas, giving Dogboe opportunities. Navarrete managed to find his second wind, though, and the finished the fight strong as Dogboe was just holding on for dear life.

In the end Navarrete (26-1, 22 KOs) realizes his dream of becoming a world champion, whereas Dogboe (20-1, 14 KOs), who has been on a tear lately, suffers the first loss of his career and probably needs to take some time to lick his wounds.

Final CompuBox stats had Navarrete landing 221 of 804 total punches (27.5%) while Dogboe landed 176 of 686 total punches (25.7%).