Australian boxing legend Jeff Fenech believes Andrew Moloney should not have been allowed to come out for the twelfth and final round of his fight with unbeaten Japanese puncher Junto Nakatani.
Last Saturday night at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Moloney was attempting to capture the vacant WBO super flyweight title.
He was dropped in the second round, but managed to come on by the midway point. Nakatani made adjustments and began to build steam as the fight played out – including a second hard knockdown in the eleventh round.
Before the start of the twelfth, Moloney’s corner mulled the idea of stopping the fight – but ultimately decided to allow him to come out for the final stanza.
Nakatani knocked Moloney out cold with a heavy hook in the closing moments. The Australian boxer was down for quite some time while receiving medical attention.
Fenech was highly critical of Moloney’s corner.
“Look the kid wasn’t going to win,” Fenech told foxsports.com.au
“What you need to do is preserve the kid for the next couple of fights because he fought a very good champion. You don’t need to be hit another 100 times. This is on my father’s grave and I was sitting here with my wife and son saying, ‘I wish he would’ve stopped it, it can take just one punch.’ I didn’t think it was going to happen until he got knocked out but you can take one punch too many… it was sickening, this kid will never be the same from it, you know.
“The corner was so terrible. All you should be doing is looking after the kid… you just say to the fighter, ‘I know you’re going to hate me for this but we’re going to look after you so we can win another world title when we get another chance.’ You don’t need to get punished anymore. You don’t need to take the chance to get hit.
“A time comes where you’ve got to honestly think about the health and evaluation of what you’re doing these days and my whole outlook on boxing and life and sport has changed because I’ve seen [it with] my best friend Mario Fenech … it doesn’t need to happen to anybody else if we can help it. Even after round eleven when he said he was going to stop it, why couldn’t he stop it? It’s round twelve, you can’t win the fight. He’s not going to knock the guy out. He hasn’t hurt the guy. It was just really sad. I was watching with my wife and we were both in bloody tears. We love the Moloney boys.”