Linde came into the fight with a record of 6 – 2 – 1, including a recent win against Kane Baker, on the Sonny Bill Williams vs Paul Gallen undercard.<\/p>\n
Linde is also 15cm taller than Masson, which Masson needs to get used to as he climbs the ranks – especially with his aim to fight David Nyika in the future.<\/p>\n
Linde has never been knocked out.<\/p>\n
But Masson came away with a win by unanimous decision, with the judges\u2019 scorecards showing 60-54.<\/p>\n
Masson impressed the promoters on the night, being able to hold pressure on Linde, and creating a game plan on a difficult opponent with two days notice.<\/p>\n
Masson\u2019s punches were accurate, landing to the body and head throughout the fight and making Linde pay when he let his guard down.<\/p>\n
With this victory, Masson\u2019s team is hoping he can climb the rankings into the top 10 in the IBF. <\/p>\n
Masson is currently ranked 11th in the IBF, 14th in the WBC and 32nd on Boxrec.<\/p>\n
These rankings put him in a good position for a possible world title contender fight, if any of the current world champions want to volunteer for a title defence.<\/p>\n
However, if Masson wants to fight for an eliminator, he needs to get into the top 10.<\/p>\n
Masson will fight again in November, but dates, venue and opponent have not yet been announced.<\/p>\n
Benjamin Watt is a retired boxing judge and New Zealand boxing writer with a decade of experience. Watt has also been BoxRec\u2019s New Zealand record-keeper since 2014.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Linde came into the fight with a record of 6 – 2 – 1, including a recent win…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29291,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[9490,4218,64,63,16485,802,27932,106343,25453,27854,4717,106342,27855,25624,85,16484,8935,23927],"class_list":["post-160281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-after","tag-another","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxer","tag-boxing","tag-change","tag-clocked","tag-despite","tag-floyd","tag-in","tag-lastminute","tag-masson","tag-opponent","tag-sports","tag-waikato","tag-win","tag-wins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}