(FEB 28) Verona, NY-Turning Stone
Casino- Amanda Serrano, 126 ˝, Brooklyn, scored a unanimous win over
Lucia Larcinese, 127, Montreal, in a crowd pleasing six. Serrano,
now 5-0-1 with 3 stoppages opened the fight cutting down the ring
and forcing a game Lucia Larcinese, now 4-5-0 into a neutral corner
where the Brooklyn based featherweight won the first serious
exchange of the bout.
Larcinese didn’t have enough to hold off the vigorously swarming
Serrano landing only landing a few counter punches the remainder of
the round. Round two found Larcinese, unable to move around the
southpaw Serrano’s lead hand, instead, moved into Serrano’s left
cross. Whatever the wisdom of that tactic, Larcinese had success in
the third and sixth rounds moving to her right out of range and
countering Serrano’s lunging left cross with jabs and right hands
which appear to be the only punches in her arsenal on this evening.
Serrano, with the exception of
the first and fourth rounds, employed her jab only
intermittently. After allowing the Canadian back into the fight
in the third round, Serrano rediscovered her jab and landed the
clearly more damaging punches in the fourth. Larcinese boxed
cautiously in the fourth and mid-way through the fifth rounds
waiting for mistakes that weren’t coming. It may have cost her
either a close win or a draw as she waited until the second half
of the fifth round to turn up the heat.
Larcinese countered well with her
right cross in the sixth as Serrano resumed reaching with her
punches. Neither fighter was down or appeared in any serious
trouble; Serrano’s punches were clearly more damaging.
The judges saw it for Serrano by the scores of 59-54, and the
more reasonable 58-56 twice. This author scored it for Serrano
58-56 giving Larcinese the third and sixth. There were some boo
birds as the winner was announced and a few at ringside thought
that Lucia Larcinese did enough to win.
Larcinese was a bit repetitious
and mechanical, while Serrano offered more variety and was more
pleasing technically. Larcinese is better than her 4-5-1 record
would indicate. Losses to the talented boxers such as Ronica
Jeffery, Adawirky Lopez, Lindsay Garbatt, and a potential future
world champion in Amanda Serrano are not embarrassing.
Amanda Serrano is on the right
track to becoming a world champion. She has the right grapes;
her wine just needs more time.
Crowd: 1100 ‘estimated’
Mark A. Jones
Utica, NY
