42-year-old heavyweight Carlos Takam (40-7-1, 28 KOs) scored a ten round split decision over 2016 Olympic super heavyweight gold medalist Tony Yoka (11-2, 9 KOs) on Saturday night at Zenith Paris in Paris, France. Yoka never got untracked and Takam pressed him all the way to deservedly win 96-94, 96-94 on two cards. Yoka was somehow ahead 96-94 on the third card. Two straight losses for Yoka now, following his defeat to Martin Bakole last May. Yoka was a 6:1 favorite.
In a bout for the European light heavyweight title, unbeaten Dan Azeez (19-0, 13 KOs) broke down and stopped Thomas Faure (21-5-1, 2 KOs) in round twelve. No time announced. Tough gritty fight. Faure not happy about the stoppage.
In a female welterweight bout, Olympic gold medalist Lauren Price (3-0, 1 KO) shut out Naomi Mannes (6-1, 4 KOs) over eight 80-72 3x.
Undefeated middleweight Farrhad Saad (8-0-2, 0 KOs) and Macaulay McGowan (17-3-2, 3 KOs) battled to an eight round draw. Scores were 77-75, 76-76, 76-76.
I thought that if Takam was going to win this fight, it would be because he caught Yoka with something big and either got rid of him entirely or did enough damage to take the fight out of him. NEVER would I have thought that Takam would just outwork Yoka and that is exactly what he did. Good for you Takam!
Yoka won a gold medal, not too many people can say that, but he’s missing something in the pros.
And I I think Lauren Price is going to be REALLY good in a couple of years – maybe an opponent for Claressa Shields someday. She won’t beat her, but we’ll see what happens.
Yoka is following the Audley Harrison path. Being a British boxer with name recognition will earn him a sizeable income, but he doesn’t look anywhere near capable of competing against the division’s top guys.
Good comparism, but Yoka is not British.
Read carefully! The comment did not say he was British.
It clearly does.
it did… and yeah, I completely screwed that up. I thought Yoka was British until you called me out. I don’t know why, because I knew he was from across the Channel.
Isn’t he French?
Yoka I believe was busted for steroids and had a year suspension. Never been the same since.
An all too common theme in boxing, horrendous scorecards. Takam easily won this fight, maybe lost 2-3 rounds tops, yet somehow all the cards are 96-94, with one judge having the audacity to score the fight for Yoka.
Takam had a great body attack in this fight and landed a good number of clean head shots. Yoka showed some sporadic offense, but nothing very effective or consistent.
LOL, Bakole only won a majority decision against Yoka despite beating the ever-loving crap out of him for 10 rounds. I expect no different. And yeah, this one wasn’t particularly close.
I had forgotten that the Bakole fight was a majority decision. Bakole literally beat the brakes off of Yoka, it was even more one-sided than today’s fight.
OK, losing against Takam finally shows that Yoka will probably not be the next superstar.
WOW, Yoka for whatever reason is turning out to be not much.
Congrats Takam, still going strong at 42
Yoka just lacks the mental fortitude for the pro game. Once he gets hit a few times, head and body, he clocks out and doesn’t want to engage.
Congrats to Takam!
Yoka Where do you go from here?
He needs to change the game. He’s pretty accurate with his punches and frankly isn’t that elusive. I think he’d do best to hit the gym and pack on some muscle weight. He’s not a good enough mover that it would impede him much. However, if he was on juice and came off, that might be a problem. We saw that with Ortiz… he looked like a monster until he popped hot and never really got back to being such a huge punching phenom.
Tony Yoca didn’t have an stellar amateur career,
despite scoring wins against Filip Hrgovic, Joe Joyc, Josepth Parker and some other good boxers and winning a gold olimpic medal, his amateur record is very bad (if the information that I have is right) 57 wins-29 losess-1 draw and among the losess there are 3 by KO or KOT and in one of them was brutally kayoed by Erislandy Savon (2011). So, I guess in his transition to the professional role he is showing what he is made of, and sadly with these disappointing losess he might lose some interest in boxing and could be flattened on his next fight.
Nice work Carlos!
takem looking good at 42 years old congrats on your win
To quote Paulie Walnuts from The Sopranos, when he addressed Christopher during Christopher’s intervention.
Tony Yoka, I am going to make this soft and sweet. Tony, you are soft. You are weak. And you are an embarrassment to yourself, and your profession. You won an Olympic Gold Medal. Start behaving yourself like a guy who deserved that medal.
Yoka did not deserve the gold medal, Joyce beat Yoka and Joyce was robbed. Always wanted to see them in a pro fight so it could be sorted out to show who is the best.
Takam can give anyone a tough time. Yoka is over rated. Just big. France isnt putting out any quality fighters right now and Macron is a bad human being. I feel for the residents there.