Right Then, That Was Close To Perfect
Right then. 100-90. 100-90. 100-90.
Shabaz Masoud beat Ckari Cani Mansilla by unanimous decision at Co-op Live on Saturday, taking the WBA International and IBF Intercontinental featherweight titles with a shutout so tidy that all three judges scored it identically and none of them had to think very hard.
Ten rounds. Thirty scoring rounds across the three cards. Mansilla won precisely none of them.
How He Did It
Masoud is a proper technician and this was the kind of performance that makes you want to show it to a fourteen-year-old who is learning.
He fought at exactly the range he wanted from the first bell. Every time Mansilla tried to close the gap, Masoud either pivoted off the back foot and made him reset, or met him coming in with a short counter that made the journey feel expensive. He barely threw a wasted punch. He barely took a clean one.
What I liked most was the tempo control. He was not trying to win rounds 10-9 with flurries in the last twenty seconds, which is the cheap way to shut somebody out. He won them from the first minute by making Mansilla fight at a speed he could not sustain and at a distance he could not solve.
That is class. Genuine, unhurried class.
The Problem With A Shutout
Here is where I am going to be slightly awkward about a performance I enjoyed.
A 100-90 shutout tells you a fighter is comfortably better than the man in front of him. It does not tell you very much else. It does not tell you what happens when somebody makes him uncomfortable, when he has to win a round he is losing, when he gets hit flush in the fifth and has to decide whether to hold or to fight back.
Masoud has now put together a run of these. He is a genuine talent and one of the most watchable British fighters in the lower weights, but the last few opponents have not asked him a question he did not already have the answer to. Mansilla was durable and game and never remotely dangerous.
At some point the belts stop being the point and the opposition becomes the point.
What Should Come Next
An international strap at featherweight is a stepping stone and everybody knows it. Masoud does not need another one.
The domestic featherweight and super bantamweight scene has a handful of live fights in it, and the European route is sitting there for a man with his skillset. What he wants, presumably, is a world title eliminator, and on pure ability he is not far off deserving one.
But ability is judged on what you have been asked to do. Right now he keeps answering questions nobody hard is asking.
Luke's Verdict
This was a lovely piece of boxing on a night that was mostly about violence further up the card.
Masoud is levels above the opposition he is being given, and the sooner someone matches him accordingly the sooner we find out how good he actually is. I think he is very good indeed. I would like the chance to find out I am right.
Get him in with somebody who can fight and watch what happens. That is the only thing left on the list.
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