Via Jack Tiernan: WBO middleweight champion Janibek Alimkhanuly (13-0.9 KOs) heated up the championship rounds to beat tough challenger Denzel Bentley (17-2-1, 14 KOs) by unanimous decision for 12 rounds last Saturday night at the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas.
With Bentley appearing in the later rounds, Janibek used the power and pressure to seal the victory.
Going into the championship rounds, Janibek’s coach Buddy McGirt told him he couldn’t take on Bentley, that he needed to support him under pressure.
Janibek responded to McGirt’s instructions by engaging Bentley, delivering multiple powerful left-handed blows to his body and head to seal his victory. In the twelfth round, Janibek injured Bentley with a powerful left-handed blow to the head that sent him swaying.
McGirt said the match was a good learning experience for Janibek as he discovered that he needed to use combos to win matches like this against opponents he couldn’t take down. fell with one blow.
Janibek made the mistake of spending too much time trying to score a KO with a punch and failing to execute combos, which could have made his fight easier. If Janibek had researched Bentley’s past failures to cash Last year, he would note that he was vulnerable to the combination. That’s what Cash used to take down Bentley, and Janibek failed to live up to the blueprint he had created.
At this point, it’s unclear if longhand Janibek can pull off combos without running out of breath as he doesn’t have a good engine and mostly gets tired of just throwing a single shot.
If Janibek can’t synergize, he’ll have a hard time beating the better middleweights in the category like Jaime Munguia, Jermall Charlo and Chris Eubank Jr.
There are others like Demetrius Andrade, David Morrell, Caleb Plant and David Benavidez who will take advantage of Janibek’s lack of coordination and poor physical strength by overwhelming him with punches.
Jury score:
“We need this; we need a fight like this where we need to make some adjustments against a guy [Bentley] that’s not going to get anywhere,” Janibek coach Buddy McGirt told Fighthypereacted to Janibek Alimkhanuly’s harder-than-expected win over British domestic boxer Denzel Bentley last Saturday night.
“I said to Janibek yesterday, ‘This guy has everything to gain and nothing to lose.’ So those guys are the worst guys to fight because they’ll put it in the line. The guy played brilliantly, but Janibek made those little adjustments in the last few innings and closed the show like a champ,” said McGirt.
Bentley took the best pictures Janibek threw and responded to him. What we discovered from this fight is that Janibek doesn’t react well when hit back and seems uncomfortable when he’s forced to take the punishment. In other words, Janibek can make it into food, but he can’t take it well.
“He thought he was going to be knocked out quickly, and then when that didn’t happen we had to adjust,“McGirt said. “While adjusting, guy [Bentleyl] start to come. I said, ‘Listen, we can’t hit this guy. We have to support him, keep him steady’, and when he did, he was in control.
“It’s hard to say because he takes a lot of body photos. This guy is tough. The mind says, ‘yes,’ but the body says, ‘Let’s start the half,’ McGirt said when asked if he thought Janibek could score a 12th-half knockout after he hurt Bentley or not.
“In the first rounds, he [Bentley] bitten [at Janibek’s feints], then he stopped and saw that Janibek was about to throw a punch, so he took advantage of that. But once Janibek hit the gas [beginning in round 10, he dominated the rest of the contest against Bentley].
“I said, ‘Let’s end the show like a champ,McGirt said when asked what he told Janibek in later rounds to push him against Bentley to win. “I’m not going to say, ‘We’re ahead. Let’s end the show like a champ, and then he goes out there, like they say, ‘Nuts and guts.’
“I love it; it’s good,” McGirt said of the way Janibek fights in the championship rounds.
“If you get knockout, knockout, knockout, knockout, and then you go in there with a guy who is at a high level, and you don’t knock him out, and you get through the eighth round What are you going to do? I can not help you. He has no reason to be hard on himself. He went to school,” McGirt said during Janibek’s performance.
Listen, I just hope that he takes this and takes his game to the next level,” McGirt said of Bentley.
“You have to make a guy pay with more than one punch. No combination [from Janibek], exactly. So we all went to school today. Hopefully people will say, ‘I’m going to fight him now.’ But what they don’t understand is that when they fight him, he will surface on that occasion.
“I’m with my guy. I think he’s the best middleweight in the world,” McGirt said when asked how Janibek would do against 160-lb WBC champion Jermall Charlo.
“Both are from Kazakhstan. They don’t even argue with each other,” said McGirt when told that the showdown to make was between Janibek and IBF/WBA middleweight champion Gennadiy Golovkin. “Look, let’s keep our fingers crossed.
“He would probably call me in a week, and he was in the deep sea for the first time. So I’ll let him stay. I just want to see him come home. He hasn’t seen his family for four months,” McGirt said when asked about his thoughts on Janibek defending Jaime Munguia.
“I just want him to go home, enjoy himself and come back next year and pick up where we left off. February or March,” McGirt said when asked when he would like to see Janibek again in the ring.
“I’m an old school guy. I don’t believe in taking off too much [time].
