Terence Crawford wanted this fight in front of his hometown crowd and he did not disappoint.
10,943 fight fans came out to CenturyLink Center in Omaha for a solid night of fights overall.
Going into the main event of the evening between Terence Crawford and Yuriorkis Gamboa, the crowd could not have been more into it. The 10K plus fans, sounded like there were many more people here than that. In the beginning of the fight, Crawford was visibly nervous in front of his fans and seemed to be caught off guard by Gamboa’s speed and constant pushing forward. Gamboa was able to keep the fight inside when taking the fight to Crawford early on. There is an argument to be made that Gamboa actually won the first 4 rounds of the fight.
However, in the 5th round the champ started to take control. He scored a knockdown that Gamboa never really seemed to recover from. After the 6th round you could really see Crawford feeling comfortable as he flashed a smile at the end of another round won. By this point, the feeling was growing that it was just a matter of time before Crawford caught Gamboa with his hands down and then this happened in the 8th round:
It’s rare that you see a hometown guy get the fight he wants in his hometown and then deliver a performance like this. It’s unknown whether Crawford will stay at 135lb or move up to 140lb in the future to get bigger fights. He showed a combination of being a fighter and a boxer tonight that will serve him well going forward.
One thing is for sure though, this won’t be the last time Omaha gets a big fight.
The undercard featured 2 other local Omaha fighters on the card. Bernard Davis defeated Heath Cline by unanimous decision 40-36 on all three judges cards. The other local fighter featured was Johnny “white boi” Determan who put on quite a show by making Ernie Marquez’ eye leak blood to the point where they had to stop the fight. However, it was ruled a no contest much to the displeasure of the crowd.
In the other HBO televised fight, Matt Korobov faced off against Jose Uzcatequi for the WBO International Middleweight Title. Jose was bleeding early on from eating multiple punches from Korobov, when he actually started to pick it up. The tables turned quickly though and Korobov scored two 7th round knockdowns that really tipped the fight in his direction. Matt Korobov won the fight and title by unanimous decision with the judges scoring it 97-91, 96-92, 97-91.