“The flap is hanging over.” That’s what it took for Mauricio Herrera to finally win a close fight Saturday on HBO Latino, and less so than usual, he might not have deserved it.
If anybody had any karmic justice coming to him, it was Herrera, a junior welterweight who arguably earned the title “champion” after his decision loss to Danny Garcia, and almost surely deserved a decision win over prospect Jose Benavidez that he lost.
Against Hank Lundy, it required a fight shortened by two head butts to get a close one. The pair head-butted in the 1st round to make it so Herrera suffered a bad cut over his right eye, and they did it again in the 2nd to make it so he suffered a cut over his left eye. The right eye cut eventually did the fight in in the 5th, i.e. some gross flap-talk.
For the most part, people scored Herrera-Garcia and Herrera-Benavidez for Herrera. He outworked his opponents in both bouts, landing punches that weren’t always hard but often were the more effective. Against Lundy, that wasn’t necessarily the case. TQBR scored it 3-2 for Lundy, based on his punch output and more effective shots. That said, they were close rounds from 1-5.
The judges had it 48-48, and 48-47/48-47 for Herrera, the 48-48 being an odd scorecard, because it was a uneven number of rounds for a judge to score even. Lundy wants a rematch. As with every Herrera fight for the last two years, a rematch would be worthwhile. For once, it’s because he wasn’t on the short end of the stick.
