Ali Akhmedov and Emmet Brennan win iffy split decisions in Dublin

Ali Akhmedov was supposed to win – and win convincingly – Friday in Dublin, Ireland, with he and his team anticipating a title eliminator that would set up the super middleweight from Kazakhstan to soon challenge for a belt.

The prognosticators were half-right.

Akhmedov indeed slipped out of 3Arena with a split decision victory over Pierre Hubert Dibombe, but anyone would be hard-pressed to justify exactly how after Dibombe scored a knockdown against Akhmedov and objectively dominated the second half of the fight.

Judges scored it 97-92 for Dibombe (an objectively reasonable score), 95-94 for Akhmedov (a stretch) and 96-93 for Akhmedov (patently ludicrous).

Akhmedov (22-1, 16 KOs) pumped a steady jab early, while Dibombe mostly pondered and worked in short bursts. Dibombe landed a leaping left hook as Akhmedov backed out in the second, but that was the only action of note in the frame.

In the third and fourth rounds, both fighters upped their activity levels – if only a little – as Akhmedov continued firing a stick at Dibombe’s high guard and Dibombe occasionally emerged from his shell to lunge forward with a sharp jab or looping right hand. Dibombe (22-2-1, 12 KOs), a 32-year-old from France and a reported 7-to-1 underdog going into the fight, could have been more aggressive in the early rounds, but he landed nearly all of the most eye-catching and effective punches – even more so as the fight wore on.

More than once in the fifth, Akhmedov bounced Dibombe backwards with a textbook one-two, but those sequences were neutralized by Dibombe, now gradually opening up, landing a booming right hand and a slick left hook.

Dibombe began finding his timing and burning hotter in the fight’s second half, catching Akhmedov moving forward with a counter jab and occasionally closing distance to lead himself. With trainer Jonathan Banks imploring Akhmedov to focus on and work off his own jab, the Kazakh fighter obliged – but not nearly often enough, and far too predictably.

In the eighth, Akhmedov’s tentativeness and habit of backing straight out caught up to him, as Dibombe exploded forward, missing with a lead jab and a right-hand follow-up but tagging Akhmedov with another quick jab to send him to the canvas. It was a flash knockdown that caught Akhmedov leaning, but it counted just the same.

Although Dibombe never went for broke, he was more active, aggressive and effective over the final rounds, while Akhmedov appeared visibly flummoxed and his corner vented outward frustration at the lack of answers. Before the 10th, Banks told Akhmedov that he needed the round simply to walk away with a draw – and any sane-of-mind scorer with two eyes would have seen Dibombe winning that session as well.

It was a running theme, apparently, as Emmet Brennan edged Kevin Cronin one fight earlier, winning a disputed split decision in what was at least a physical and more competitive battle of super middleweights.

Both fighters were there to be hit, but the 28-year-old Cronin (8-2-1, 4 KOs), of Country Kerry, Ireland, appeared to do more of the hitting while seemingly earning a majority of the fight’s scheduled eight rounds. He turned in effective body work and found a home for some teeth-rattling power shots set up by a long jab, outlanding Brennan 163-137 on total punches, according to CompuBox statistics.

But Dublin’s Brennan (4-0, 1 KOs) was cagey inside, at times smothering Cronin’s length and landing his own short, hammering shots. The 33-year-old Brennan mostly matched Cronin’s pace, and even clubbed his countryman with two uppercuts late in the eighth round that, with a bit more zip on them, might have ended the affair more decisively.

Cronin – bruised, swollen and smiling during the announcing of the scorecards – was immediately furious with the outcome: a score of 77-75 in his favor, along with two more cards (78-75 and 78-74) for Brennan.

“I blocked a lot of his shots on the inside,” Brennan said when interviewed in the ring afterward. “When we’d break, I was catching him with the 1-2 every single time. … It was a very close fight, though I wouldn’t call it a robbery.”

Jason Langendorf is the former Boxing Editor of ESPN.com, has contributed to Ringside Seat and the Queensberry Rules, and has written about boxing for Vice, The Guardian, Chicago Sun-Times and other publications. A member of the Boxing Writers Association of America, he can be followed on X and LinkedIn, and emailed at [email protected].