Former unified women’s Super Featherweight world champion – now undisputed champion, American Alycia Baumgardner, showed up in the co-main event of the Serrano vs. Cruz card with a dominant performance over her opponent, French contender Elhem Mekhaled. Baumgardner won by unanimous decision, and the scorecards painted a picture of Baumgardner widely being favored with scores of 99-89 twice, and 98-90.
After unifying against fellow American, Mikaela Mayer (17-1, 5 KO’s) who she narrowly beat, Alycia Baumgardner’s delivered against Elhem Mekhaled (15-2, 3 KO’s) by cruising to a unanimous decision victory. With the vacant WBA title available, the two met in an undisputed bout with all of the titles in the line. As the WBC, WBO, IBF World and The Ring Lineal champion of the 130 lbs division prior to the match, Baumgardner was expected to dominate over Mekhaled and graciously delivered.
From the start of the fight, Mekhaled seemed incapable of dealing with Baumgardner’s relentless jabs and debilitating body shots. In the third round of their fight, Mekhaled was knocked down as Baumgardner capitalized on the damage she caused with a right hand, after half the time in the round had passed. Baumgardner continued her onslaught and seemingly knocked Mekhaled down again with 40 seconds left on the clock, but the knockdown was apparently not counted due to an alleged push by Baumgardner.
Though Baumgardner commanded a fierce lead over Mekhaled in the duration of the fight, Mekhaled showed surprising commitment as she managed to rally several times throughout the fight to stop herself from being pushed back, and even succeeded to take the fight to Baumgardner at times. Baumgardner showed an improvement in her defensive fundamentals, however, and went on to box fairly well with the Frenchwoman, showing off a moderate improvement of her jab in the process.
The seventh round saw Elhem Mekhaled get in trouble again as she once more got caught by a right hand that left her legs buckling, but in an amazing show of courage and determination, Mekhaled avoided being dropped again and managed to swerve a lethal right hand from Baumgardner before tying up with the American.
The championship rounds were more of the same, with both combatants not doing near as much as they had earlier. The tenth round, however, turned into a slugfest that saw Baumgardner edge out a tight round.
The match culminated with Baumgardner winning by unanimous decision with a wide margin of scores, and further winning the then-vacant WBA Super Featherweight title, making her become undisputed for the first time of her career.
Content with her performance and achievement, Baumgardner did not waste any time calling out new opponents to face, including her former opponent Mikaela Mayer, and current Lightweight undisputed champion Katie Taylor (22-0, 6 KO’s)), who is set to face Amanda Serrano (44-2-1, 30 KO’s) on the 20th of May.
Following their controversial match, another win against Mayer would subvert the opinion that Mayer got the better of her, and firmly place consolidate Baumgardner’s current position as a pound-for-pound fighter.
