Hitchins carves through Kambosos with ease, retains 140 title
Scores 8th-round TKO in one-sided fight; Cruz destroys Mishiro in lightweight eliminator to earn title shot; heavyweight prospect Teremoana obliterates Whitfield
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During the buildup to their fight, IBF junior welterweight titlist Richardson Hitchins repeatedly called former unified lightweight champion George Kambosos Jr. “a bum” and said if he fought the way he had seen him perform in recent fights “it’s gonna be a messy night for him and I can guarantee you that.”
He backed up his boasts emphatically in his first title defense.
Hitchins delivered a one-sided beating to Kambosos, the mandatory challenger, before knocking him out with a body shot in the eighth-round of the main event of a Matchroom Boxing card on DAZN on Saturday night at The Theater at Madison Square Garden in New York, a homecoming fight for the Brooklyn native.
Hitchins, who won the title by decision from then-undefeated Liam Paro in December, turned in perhaps the finest performance of his career against Kambosos, a heavy underdog known for his toughness, who turned 32 on Saturday.
It was a full-circle moment for Hitchins, who in November 2021 was in attendance at The Theater when Kambosos scored a shocking and monumental upset split decision over Teofimo Lopez to take his unified lightweight title in the fight Kambosos has been making a living off since.
“A few years ago I was watching Teofimo and George Kambosos go to war and I was sitting somewhere upstairs and I said when I get my opportunity I would make the best of it and with the help of (Matchroom Boxing promoter) Eddie Hearn and (manager) Keith Connolly they changed my life in the matter of two years,” Hitchins said.
“The fight itself, I’ve been telling the boxing world I’m the truth. If you didn’t know Richardson Hitchins now you know. I’ve been telling the boxing world I’m coming and they should have listened and now I’m here.”
Hitchins punished Kambosos throughout the fight with a mixture of debilitating body shots and hard jabs that rocked Kambosos’ head back time and again and raised swelling around his right eye.