(Zou Shiming; via @HBOBoxing on Twitter)
Through a couple rounds, Zou Shiming was delivering his best performance Saturday night on the undercard of Manny Pacquiao vs. Chris Algieri. By the end of the fight, all of his old flaws had resurfaced. But he won almost every round, scored a number of knockdowns against Kwanpichit Onesongchaigym and moves onward and upward.
Two great right hands in the 2nd that beat Onesongchaigym to the shot dropped him two separate times, and you might have thought that he had solved his power problem. Nope. The straight shots he was throwing went away shortly thereafter, and he started getting hit more.
In the 6th, he scored another knockdown, and got another point off some low blows (three in a row) by Onesongchaigym. Yet not long after, he suffered a cut over his left eye that was pretty bad. And it started swelling badly.
You can’t blame the shoddiness of the performance after the 2nd on that, however. Zou went back to slapping and dancing around with his hands down, often getting tagged unnecessarily. The 11th was Onesongchaigym’s best, but he didn’t come out quite as hard in the 12th. Another knockdown for Zou came in the 12th. The scores read 119-106, 120-103 and 120-103.
It would be suicide to put Zou in with Amnat Ruenroeng, a top flyweight contender, the way Top Rank is talking about. He showed signs early in the fight he might be ready; he showed for the rest of his fight he ain’t.
