Daniel Jacobs saw blood and went in for the kill. Only the blood he saw was his own: Cut in the 3rd round by Giovanni Lorenzo, Jacobs went after the toughest test of his comeback from cancer and landed a left-right combo to finish off a man who had never been stopped before.
It was a good main event debut for the Monday night Fox Sports 1 boxing show, even if the rest of the show was sub-par.
Jacobs, a top prospect at middleweight and in the whole sport before battling cancer, was in a couple close rounds through two with Lorenzo, who had gone the distance in losses to the likes of Hassan N'Dam N'Jikam, Sebastian Sylvester and Felix Sturm. He's always been sturdy and always had some pop, but the "sturdy" part went out the window Monday thanks to Jacobs' combo that scrambled his eyeballs and left him unable to stand. Things were looking up for Lorenzo just before that, since Jacobs had a bad gash. Jacobs is now officially ready to take on a contender at 160. Golden Boy has talked up a potential meeting with Peter Quillin, a fight I like as a meeting of athletic boxers with still unproven talent.
(left to right: Jacobs, Bernard Hopkins, Lorenzo before the fight; via Golden Boy website)
The less said about the undercard of the show, though, the better. We'll do it quickly, and leave out one bout. Steve Upsher Chambers, coming off a loss to Luis Collazo, spent three rounds not doing anything against welterweight prospect Eddie Gomez, who in return could barely be bothered to attack a man he had hurt a few times. Chambers finally gave it a go in the 4th, seeing as how Gomez wasn't going to go all-out, and was landing, and Gomez in turn responded, landing a sequence of punches that backed Chambers against the ropes. Referee Steve Smoger, normally not so quick with the trigger, stepped in and stopped it. Gomez looks like he has talent but also was too lackadaisical and too squared up, so while this might be a good win on paper for a 14th fight, it didn't prove as much as we might have hoped.
Terrell Gausha, a middleweight ex-Olympian whose name is pronounced "geisha" or "gow-shay" depending on which Fox Sports 1 commentator has his name in their mouth, made short work of Austin Marcum (5-3-0) to improve his own record to 5-0, 3 KO. It was a typical level of opposition for a young prospect, and while I missed much of it because I tuned in a mere seven minutes late, the finish was unmistakable, as Gausha showed with a head/body combination why he is one of the most hyped of the U.S. 2012 Olympics class.
