MOLONEY OUTBOXES ASTROLABIO, CAPTURES WBO BANTAM TITLE
By Dong Secuya
PhilBoxing.com
Sun, 14 May 2023
Australian Jason Moloney and his team hatched a game plan to frustrate power punching Filipino Vincent Astrolabio and stuck to it the whole night to claim victory and the WBO bantamweight title at the Stockton Arena in Stockton, CA Saturday night (Sunday in Manila) promoted by Top Rank and streamed live on ESPN. Moloney won by majority decision by scores of 116-112, 115-113 and 114-114. Philboxing had it 116-112 for Moloney.
Moloney who had challenged for a world title twice but failed, cannot be denied this time around as he used a lot of movement and plenty of jabs to put Astrolabio at bay, nullifying Astrolabio's vaunted power shots.
Astrolabio had his moments in spurts connecting and seemingly hurting the Aussie but Moloney used his experience to thwart these critical moments by tying up Astrolabio or used good lateral movements to escape.
By the 9th round, it appeared that Astrolalbio had no answer to Moloney's boxing skills as the Aussie coasted along to win the fight.
After failing in his two attempts for a world title against Emmanuel Rodriguez in 2018 and Naoya Inoue in 2020, which also accounted for his two losses, Jason Moloney has finally arrived at the mountain top and has now improved to 26-2-0, 19KOs.
Astrolabio, who got the opportunity to fight for the title after his impressive wins against future hall of famer Guillermo Rigondeaux and Nikolai Potapov in his last two outings, will have to go back to the drawing board and needs to add more tools to his skillset in order be in the mix with fighters at the highest level and not just bank on with his vaunted punching power. Astrolabio's record dipped to 18-4-0, 13KOs.
Photos by Jhay Otamias / PhilBoxing.com.
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