Ding ding… then BANG.
Sebastian "The Towering Inferno" Fundora kept his WBC super welterweight title in Las Vegas on Saturday night with one last left hand in the 12th and final round.
Ermal Hadribeaj went down. Got back up. Referee Thomas Taylor waved it off anyway.
Official result: KO, round 12, 2:59. Scorecards Fundora was already winning comfortably — in the bin.
Here's the problem.
Plenty of people say the bell had already gone.
"I didn't agree with the stoppage at all. The bell rung before the punch landed," Terence Crawford said on the TNT/DAZN broadcast. "The man got up. He deserved to go to the final bell."
Tim Bradley called Taylor "one of the best in the business" — but said he had "an off night tonight".
The punch was ruled legal because Fundora started it before the bell. Fair enough. But stopping a man who beat the count, with the fight already over ??
Hadribeaj came in unbeaten (23-0-1), gave away more than half a foot in height, hurt the champion in round two and kept coming. He lost points for holding in rounds three and 11, so this was no robbery on the cards.
He just deserved to hear the bell.
And that wasn't the only sour note on the night.
Sydney's Koen Mazoudier was meant to fight Jermall Charlo. Charlo pulled out injured — the second time that fight fell over. In stepped former WBA super middleweight champion Armando "Toro" Reséndiz, with the fight put together on less than three weeks' notice. Big respect to him for taking it.
Mazoudier — 31, moved up two weight classes, less than two months after a war with Sam Beck on the Gold Coast — went toe to toe for ten rounds and had the Mexican in trouble in the ninth.
The judges? 98-92, 97-93, 97-93.
"I think the official scores should have been closer," The Ring's Doug Fischer posted on X.
Reséndiz himself called him "an Australian warrior". Mazoudier made no excuses: "He was the better fighter tonight."
Class.
As for Fundora — the man who ended Tim Tszyu's unbeaten run in 2024 — he wants the lot. "Let's go for undisputed," he said, with WBA and WBO champion Jaron "Boots" Ennis and IBF champion Josh Kelly expected to meet in early 2027.
📅 Saturday, October 17 (US) / Sunday, October 18 (Vietnam)
📍 The Chelsea at The Cosmopolitan, Las Vegas
🥊 WBC super welterweight title | Super middleweight co-feature
Mazoudier walked in the underdog and walked out with a whole lot of new fans. He wants back on an American card.
On that showing, he's earned it !
