Serhii Bohachuk (25-2, 24 KOs) looked powerful dispatching Ishmael Davis (13-2, 6 KOs) in a sixth-round TKO in their WBC junior middleweight title eliminator last Saturday night in Riyadh.
Bohachuk’s Power Display
The fight was stopped after the sixth round by referee Hector Afu after Davis’ corner chose to have the contest halted. With the hard shots Bohachuk had hit him with in rounds five and sixth, Davis would not have made it through the seventh without being knocked out. The official time of the stoppage was at 3:00 of round six.
Through four rounds, the fight was sometimes competitive, with Ishmael having brief moments but mostly getting royally hammered by Bohachuk. In the fifth and sixth, it was one-sided with the Ukrainian Bohachuk teeing off on Davis at medium and close range.
Bohachuk vs. Davis Punch Stats
– Ishmael Davis: 65 of 223 punches for 29.1%
– Serhii Bohachuk: 135 of 414 for 32.6%
Most of Bohachuk’s shots landed in the fight were power punches, which explains why he quickly wore down Davis to get his sixth-round stoppage. Bohachuk connected on 108 power punches and 27 jabs of the 414 punches he threw in the fight. He had excellent accuracy on his power punches, landing 41.1% of them. That’s a high number for a fighter with Bohachuk’s kind of power.
Davis Outmatched
Surprisingly, Davis thought he could fight Serhii on the inside. What a mistake. The short punches from Bohhachuk resembled the shots that light heavyweight champion Artur Beterbiev throws. They don’t look like they’re powerful, but they do damage. It was interesting that Davis didn’t try to adapt by moving away, but it probably wouldn’t have mattered.
Davis’ promoter, Eddie Hearn, looked gloomy in the crowd after watching him get dropped by a left hook from Bohachuk in round two. Ishmael, 29, had fought well in round one, landing a looping right hand that momentarily backed the former WBC interim 154-lb champion Bohachuk off.
Davis nailed Bohachuk with a nice right hand in the fourth round, but that wasn’t enough to back him off. Serhii kept pressuring him, hitting him with hard punches and not letting him get much of a breather in between attacks.
Davis’ movement wasn’t nearly enough to prevent Bohachuk from cutting off the ring and continuing to bludgeon him with chopping GGG-esque power shots. The punches weren’t thrown with a lot of speed, but man, they were wearing Ishmael down.
Bohachuk is now the WBC mandatory for 154-lb champion Sebastian ‘The Towering Inferno’ Fundora. He’s not going to be getting a title shot any time soon, unfortunately. Fundora will be defending against Errol Spence next, and he may choose to fight someone else after that in a money fight, like Terence Crawford.
An interesting fight that I would like to see is Bohachuk against Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis. However, given Boots’ decision to stay at welterweight to try and unify the division, he probably would reject a dangerous fight against Bohachuk, no matter how much money Turki Alalshikh offered him. It would be fun to see how Ennis would do trading power shots against Bohachuk.
With Jaron’s porous defense, Bohachuk would have a field day against him, landing at will and having an easier time than he did against Davis. Boots is promoted by Hearn. He would probably resist the idea of Ennis fighting Bohachuk, knowing that it wouldn’t end well for him.
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