Molina pulls off upset of Provodnikov

When two brawlers who have a defense by offense strategy step in the ring, it makes for a very entertaining fight and after a 12-round brawl, former title contender John Molina earned a unanimous decision victory over former titleholder Ruslan Providnikov in a slight upset.

Had Provodnikov won the fight he likely would have gone on to fight the winner of the upcoming Terrance Crawford – Victor Postol fight, which is properly being billed as a fight between the No. 1 and No. 2 light welterweights in the world, but Molina stuck with a strong job to keep space and out-boxed him in a technical manner to earn the victory at Turning Stone Resort Casino in Verona, NY on Saturday night’s main event of Premier Boxing Champions.

In his first fight with new trainer Shadeed Suluki, Molina was much more active than Provodnikov, landing 377 of 1,092 punches while Providnikov landed 283 of 705 punches.

It did not take long for the fight to get heated.

The first round was the typical feel-out round, but that was the only one of those. In the second round both fights came out firing. The different though was that Molin continues to throw and land his jab, which kept Providnikov bouncing back and attempting to find spots to move in before being sent back when he got hit with another.

The former champion couldn’t stay in and slug with his opponent like he usually does to take advantage of his big power in the junior welterweight division, which helped Molina stay relatively fresh throughout the fight where opponents typically would have been beaten down and taken out later in the fight.

Instead, Molina picked things up even more and clinically out-boxed Provodnikov in the final rounds as he was the one wearing down.

Molina earned his second-straight victory since dropping three-straight to Lucas Mattysse, Humberto Soto and Adrien Broner from April 2014 to March 2015. Provodnikov dropped his fourth fight in seven outings with all of his losses in that span coming to bigger-named opponents (Tim Bradley Jr, Matthysse and now Molina). Providnikov will likely have to rebound with a victory over a top 10 opponent before getting another shot at the title. Molina will likely get in a title eliminator after this victory for the opportunity to fight for the title.

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Corey Johns

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You could say Corey was born to become a sports journalist. His father won a national championship coaching college soccer. His mother is a baseball fanatic who hasn't missed seeing an Orioles game since 1983 (literally, sometimes it's annoying). His great uncle was a big-time boxing promoter and his maternal grandfather was once a department head at the Baltimore Sun. Basically, sports and journalism run through his blood. He played just about every little league sports there was when he was a kid and was a multi-sport athlete in high school; even playing in the first-ever high school sanction Rugby game in the country. Eventually he retired from sports as an undefeated Maryland state Rugby champion as a high school senior. Perhaps lack of athletic talent has more to do with the retirement, but he will tell you that it more had to do with a great desire to jump right into media. Upon his graduation from University of Maryland, Baltimore County as a triple communications major, Corey started the So Much Sports network and has continued to grow his websites and continues to work to make them premier sports media outlets.

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