A hoped-for fan-friendly brawl between junior welterweights Mauricio Herrera and Ji-Hoon Kim on ESPN2's Friday Nights Fights instead turned into a cringe-inducing, one-sided mismatch as Herrera teed off on Kim at will en route to a 10-round unanimous decision.
The special edition of FNF aired Thursday and might've served as a nice warm-up to the big weekend for the sport if stepping into the ring with Kim wasn't the boxing equivalent of what happens when Albert Pujols steps into the slow-pitch softball batting cage. And Herrera might not be able to punch very hard, but he is a crafty scrapper. By the 1st round, it was clear that this one could get ugly.
All Kim had was gameness; a heavy hitter at lightweight, his punches didn't seem to hurt Herrera, outside a cut he opened in the 7th, and he lunged clumsily forward, telegraphing every punch, square as square can be for Herrera's return fire. He might've won the 5th. A generous judge gave him three rounds. In the 8th, he cornered Herrera and threw more than 100 punches, by CompuBox's count, but only landed 18, and Herrera was in charge anyway, landing more punches at about a 50 percent rate. Had Kim's corner been on the ball, they would've stopped the bout before it got very far, but all you have to do is look at Kim's fighting abilities to know that they're not on the ball.
Herrera will make good fights with any contender and belongs back on TV, any TV, soon, while Kim only belongs on TV against someone who is 100 percent terrible.
On the undercard, former lightweight contender Miguel Acosta lost a unanimous decision to Miguel Gonzalez. Didn't watch it live. Just on-passing.
