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DETROIT -- Although Mary Jo Sanders didn’t earn a million bucks for her win
Saturday night, her Detroit fans sure thought she fought like it.
Sanders earned the WBC Interim Welterweight belt with a unanimous decision
win over tough Elisa Olson to improve to 17-0 in her career. As expected,
Sanders was the more efficient tactician, although she did absorb a few of
Olson’s looping hooks which earned the California-based challenger the
admiration of many in the Cobo Arena crowd of 3,000.
All three judges saw it 98-92,97-93 and 96-94. Neither fighter was in any
serious trouble in the fight. Olson was caught off balance and wobbled
slightly in the third by a Sander’s hook, and Olson did some of her best
work in the seventh, before tiring a bit in the final two rounds. Sanders’
best round might have been the 10th, making sure there were no hometown
upsets on this night.
“It feels like I fought my best but I’m in her hometown, if I can bring it
to my hometown, the decision might change,” Olson (now 8-6-2) said after the
fight. “I know I hit her, I stunned her, I cut her. But I didn’t probably
throw enough punches. But I feel my performance was pretty good given the
amount of time I had to train for this fight. I was told a month before, but
it’s OK. She knows who I am. I know she’ll never fight me again because
she’ll be scared. If she does want to fight me again, tell her to bring. it.
Maybe we’ll fight in Vegas or something. I’d be willing to do it again.”
The fight came off on the same night Christy Martin and Lucia Rijker were
scheduled to fight for a $1 million in Las Vegas. It would have been the
largest purse in women’s boxing history, but the fight was cancelled last
week after Rijker tore her Achilles.
It was Olson’s fifth crack a a title, but most of her fights have been on
the road. She once called herself a “fighter on call”, having lost or drawn
a number of close decisions in the backyards of several world champions.
Sanders stuck largely to her preflight plan with lots of movement and lots
of jabs, and on occasion showed a brief willingness to mix it up, prompting
chants of “Mary Jo” from her fans in the last two rounds.
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