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07/15/2007 Archived Entry: "Molitor Thrills Crowd to Retain IBF Title"
Molitor Thrills Crowd to Retain IBF Title
by Cliff Endicott at Ringside
Molitor at the weigh-in
I hate casinos. Too loud, too crowded, too full of lost souls. The perfect showcase for all of the worst behaviors of humanity. In all the time there have been casinos in Ontario, I had never made my way to any of them.
But finally, on Saturday night, I found myself at Casino Rama in Orillia, Ontario. The reason? An Ontario fighter has himself a world title, and he was defending it there; "The Canadian Kid" Steve Molitor was putting his IBF Junior Featherweight title on the line against #1 challenger Taklani Ndlovu of South Africa. Hard enough to recall the last time an Ontario fighter even HAD a world title let alone defended it on home soil, so this was a pretty momentous occasion.
Casino Rama delivered to us an entertaining and very professionally produced fight card that brought a packed house to it's feet, culminating in Molitor's 9th round KO win. Showing the boxing establishment how hungry they are for real fight cards, the sellout crowd rarely stopped tearing the roof off the place the entire length of the fight.
Molitor is a very defensively gifted fighter, slippery and hard to catch, a beautiful counter-puncher and very difficult to hit cleanly. Ndlovu is more of a stalking fighter, willing to walk down his man and make him mix it up. These contrasting styles made for a very entertaining matchup, even if it ended up being a little one-sided.
The crowd showed appropriate respect to Ndlovu and to the playing of his South African national anthem, but from the first note of Oh Canada the crowd was very loudly showing Molitor their support. And after a feeling out first round, Molitor gave them plenty to cheer about.
I had the first round even, and thought the 5th was close enough to go either way, but beyond those two rounds The Canadian Kid put on a clinic. Winning most of his rounds easily, Molitor was busy, very accurate and economical with his shots, and slowly ground his challenger down.
Ndlovu wasn't without his moments, landing a little here and there and even catching Steve a good solid one to the chin in the 5th, but by the 7th round he was showing swelling around the eyes and was noticeably rocked by a couple of combinations in the 8th. When Molitor finally landed a solid "coming-in" right hand in the ninth, Ndlovu went down hard. The referee gave him ample opportunity to fight his way out of it, letting the fight continue through three knockdowns, but finally stopped the fight with Ndlovu nearly defenseless on the ropes and struggling to stay on his feet.
Molitor made the crowd extremely happy (and deafening) with his win, overall performance, and his class throughout. I can pretty much assure you that this won't be his last defense in Ontario. If it is, the ball will have been dropped in a big way, as Ontario showed what a great venue it will be for world title fights. That this fight was such a success even out in Sticksville (casino or not, this is nowhere near a major population center) shows just how badly Ontario wants big-time boxing.
On the undercard, Paul Clavette won a split six-round decision in his Super Middleweight bout with Stephan Boyd, followed by Irishman Martin Lindsay's lopsided Super Featherweight decision over Jose Silveira. The most entertaining fight on the undercard was Ontario middleweight Shawn Garnett's surprising and completely one-sided beating of undefeated South African Kgotso "The Dark Destroyer" Motau. Call it Nigel's revenge. And in the final undercard bout, favoured Canadian Sebastian Gauthier was nailed 20 seconds into his IBF International Bantamweight title fight against Eduarda Garcia, and he never got his legs under him after that. After a sustained 4 round pumeling, his corner wisely stopped the action prior to the 5th round.
