UNC Boxing Club Wraps Up Season

UNC Boxing attended UMD’s annual Rum­ble at Ritchie Invitational.

At 141lbs, UNC’s Yang Chen boxed Tow­son’s Noah Haycock. The boxers spent the first round feeling each other out with feints and abridged attacks. Over the subsequent rounds, Chen solidified himself as the aggressor in the match, controlling the pace and space.  However, Haycock landed just enough stop-hits and counters to win a split decision.

UNC’s Ricardo Crespo met the bigger Ryan Turner of Towson at a compromise weight of 152lbs. Both boxers started the match with counters, but by the second round Crespo found his range and began dropping the hammer on Turner. Turner received a standing 8-count in the third round after Crespo dropped him to the canvas with a sharp right to his chin. Turner recovered quickly, but Crespo won by decision.

Two experienced boxers, UNC’s Chris­tian Coody and UMD’s Takahiro Kawasaki, had their bout at 160lbs. Kawasaki received a stiff warning from the referee in the first round for punching behind the ear. Coody threw a high volume of jabs against Kawasaki’s efforts to roll inside with bombs. Kawasaki had a strong mid-range game, but was forced to tie-up as he lost exchanges inside. As the second round came to a close, Kawasaki’s volume decreased while he hunted for home-crowd pleasing hard shots. He landed a few, but the score was still close in the third when Coody gained more control over the pace. In the end Kawasaki was awarded the win by split decision. The rounds seemed long, and it was later learned the time keeper had mistakenly set them at 3 minutes instead of the 2 minutes used for college bouts.

The NCBA and USIBA canceled their end of season tournaments due to the covid-19 pandemic, effectively ending the college boxing season.

Editor’s Note; CSN thanks Josh Sokal for another season of UNC boxing match reports.