Osleys Iglesias stopped Pavel Silyagin in the eighth round Thursday at the Montreal Casino in Montreal to win the vacant IBF super middleweight title.
The time of the stoppage was 3:00, when Silyagin was unable to answer the bell for the ninth round.
The fight was nothing short of a boxing lesson imparted by Iglesias. He rocked Silyagin halfway through the first round with a right uppercut, which caused immediate swelling on Silyagin’s left eye. Iglesias, 28, continued to stalk Silyagin in the second round, but he was unable to land anything of consequence.
Silyagin, a career spoiler, had success with his awkward timing in the third, but it didn’t seem like enough to win the round. The awkwardness continued into the following round, but Silyagin was having to do a lot and wasn’t all that effective while, at the same time, taking punishment from Iglesias.
The issue was power. Iglesias was fighting methodically and still hurting the 32-year-old Silyagin, who was staying busy but not looking to land a damaging blow. At the end of the fifth round, Silyagin had blood coming from his nose. He continued to take a risk-averse approach, giving Iglesias few opportunities to land, but the damage was mounting, and in the later rounds blood was flowing from both of Silyagin’s nostrils. The bout was called off before the start of the ninth.
The IBF title had been vacant since the retirement of former three-division undisputed champion Terence Crawford, with Iglesias being the first titleholder since Crawford’s retirement.
Iglesias, a Cuban now residing in Berlin, Germany, improved to 15-0 (14 KOs). He now goes from a high-risk, low-reward fighter to owning a belt, which should help him land better opponents and bigger fights in the future.
Silyagin, of Novosibirsk, Russia, lost his first professional fight, his record dipping to 16-1-1 (7 KOs).
Eye of the Tiger, which promoted the event, has something of a monopoly at the top of super middleweight. The promotion now has two titleholders in the division, as it also promotes WBC titleholder Christian Mbilli.
Lucas Ketelle is the author of “Inside the Ropes of Boxing,” a guide for young fighters, a writer for BoxingScene and a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. Find him on X at @BigDogLukie.
