{"id":436476,"date":"2026-01-25T12:05:06","date_gmt":"2026-01-25T12:05:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/436476\/"},"modified":"2026-01-25T12:05:06","modified_gmt":"2026-01-25T12:05:06","slug":"raymond-muratalla-retains-ibf-title-with-majority-decision-over-andy-cruz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/436476\/","title":{"rendered":"Raymond Muratalla Retains IBF Title With Majority Decision over Andy Cruz"},"content":{"rendered":"

Raymond Muratalla <\/a>proved the oddsmakers and Andy Cruz<\/a> wrong Saturday night.
Muratalla, an underdog despite being the defending IBF lightweight champion<\/a>, pressured the ambitious Cuban contender throughout their back-and-forth fight, landed the harder punches with more regularity and won a majority decision to retain his title at Fontainebleau Las Vegas.<\/p>\n

Cruz countered Muratalla and fought well almost exclusively off his back foot, yet judges Tim Cheatham (118-110) and Steve Weisfeld (116-112) scored 10 and eight rounds for the champion.<\/p>\n

Judge Max De Luca scored their thoroughly competitive contest a draw, 114-114.<\/p>\n

Muratalla, 29, defended his 135-pound championship for the first time. The Fontana, California, native was elevated to full champion when former champ Vasiliy Lomachenko retired <\/a>a few weeks after Muratalla (24-0, 17 KOs) unanimously outpointed Russia\u2019s Zaur Abdullaev<\/a> to win the interim crown May 10 in San Diego.<\/p>\n

\u201cI came here to do what I was supposed to do, and I got the win tonight,\u201d Muratalla told DAZN\u2019s Chris Mannix. \u201cI was just putting pressure. I knew he wasn\u2019t gonna be able to handle it and taking him to deep waters for 12 rounds, he wasn\u2019t able to handle it. \u2026 I wasn\u2019t falling into his traps and I was breaking him apart, breaking him down round by round.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cruz (6-1, 3 KOs) boxed beyond the 10th round for the first time, but the well-conditioned tactician fought well during the championship rounds. A 2021 Olympic gold medalist, he was nonetheless denied in his bid to become a world champion.<\/p>\n

By the time the final bell sounded, it seemed as though the judges would\u2019ve had it much closer than Cheatham scored their DAZN main event.<\/p>\n

CompuBox\u2019s unofficial punch stats clearly indicated Cruz was more effective than Cheatham thought. <\/p>\n

Cruz landed one more punch overall according to CompuBox (176-of-537 to 175-of-611). Muratalla was credited for landing 13 more power punches (112-of-296 to 99-of-251), whereas CompuBox counted 14 more jabs for Cruz (77-of-286 to 63-of-215).<\/p>\n

Muratalla hammered Cruz with a right hand that backed him up with under a minute remaining in the 12th round. By then it was clear neither the heavy-handed champion nor the challenger would be hurt. <\/p>\n

A stiff left by Muratalla made Cruz reset his feet 45 seconds into the 11th as his pressure remained a factor.<\/p>\n

They traded short shots on the inside during the 10th as each fighter had his moments. Cruz caught the crowd\u2019s attention with a right hand on the inside that backed up Muratalla.<\/p>\n

Cruz caught Muratalla with right about 40 seconds into the ninth round. Muratalla\u2019s right uppercut connected with just under a minute to go in the eighth, and he cracked Cruz with a hard right that made him shake his head with about 30 seconds to go in the seventh.<\/p>\n

Cruz continued to throw hard rights and lefts as Muratalla came forward in the sixth.<\/p>\n

Muratalla walked through Cruz\u2019s right hand with about 1:10 left in the competitive fifth round. Cruz landed a harder right hand in an exchange with a little more than a minute to go in the fourth.<\/p>\n

Cruz caught Muratalla with a right with just over a minute to go in the third round. Muratalla dug hard lefts to Cruz\u2019s body around halfway point of the third. <\/p>\n

Muratalla landed two rights as they traded punches in the center of the ring during the second round. A left by Muratalla landed later in the second as well.<\/p>\n

A right uppercut by Muratalla landed with a little more than minute to go in the opening round. Cruz connected with two right hands in a five-second span barely a minute into the first round.<\/p>\n

Eleven rounds later, Muratalla had separated himself from the most capable opponent of his nine-year pro career.<\/p>\n

\u201c[I proved] that I\u2019m a champion,\u201d Muratalla said. \u201cI deserve to be here. I worked my ass off to get here and it\u2019s showing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Keith Idec is a senior writer and columnist for The Ring. He can be reached on X @idecboxing<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Raymond Muratalla proved the oddsmakers and Andy Cruz wrong Saturday night.Muratalla, an underdog despite being the defending IBF…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":436477,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,2989,2983,2831,2988,2981,2984,2985,2986,2987,2982,1920,2993,2992,1913,2976,2977,2990,2978,2975,2994,2772,85,2991,2974,2980,2979],"class_list":["post-436476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxing","tag-boxing-community","tag-boxing-fights","tag-boxing-history","tag-boxing-interviews","tag-boxing-magazine","tag-boxing-photos","tag-boxing-rankings","tag-boxing-results","tag-boxing-schedule","tag-boxing-videos","tag-boxing-news","tag-disqualification","tag-draw","tag-fight","tag-fighter","tag-fighter-news","tag-knockout","tag-latest-boxing-matches","tag-ring","tag-ring-magazine","tag-split-decision","tag-sports","tag-technical-knockout","tag-the-ring","tag-top-fighters","tag-upcoming-boxing-matches"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436476","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=436476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436476\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/436477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}