Jeremiah Nakathila is certain he would’ve delivered the crushing knockout of Miguel Berchelt that he predicted had referee Russell Mora and a ringside physician allowed their lightweight fight to continue after the sixth round Saturday night.
Nakathila basically dominated the favored Berchelt before Mora halted their scheduled 10-rounder at Resorts World Las Vegas. The 32-year-old Namibian boxer dropped Berchelt during the third round and dislodged Berchelt’s mouthpiece with a right hand late in the sixth round, which caused a brief break in the action.
A Nevada State Athletic Commission doctor determined after a lopsided sixth round that Berchelt shouldn’t answer the bell for the seventh round.
“I was going to knock him out or put him to sleep in a bad way,” Nakathila said. “Luckily, [Mora] saw it coming and decided [Berchelt] couldn’t come back.”
Nakathila (23-2, 19 KOs) won all six rounds on each judge’s scorecard. Tim Cheatham, Dave Moretti and Steve Weisfeld had him ahead 60-53 through six rounds of a main event ESPN aired.
According to CompuBox’s unofficial statistics, Nakathila landed 45 more punches overall than Berchelt (125-of-503 to 80-of-287). CompuBox credited Nakathila with a huge edge in power punches (78-of-245 to 27-of-75) against an opponent who tried to come back from a brutal, 10th-round knockout defeat to Oscar Valdez in his previous fight 13 months earlier at MGM Grand Conference Center in Las Vegas.
“From the first round, my corner told me to take my time,” Nakathila said. “I know what I have. I knew it would be difficult for him to reach the 10th round. It wasn’t so easy, but I made it look easy.”
Berchelt (38-3, 34 KOs) tried to fight back at times, but Nakathila took his best shots and delivered damaging punches of his own. Eventually, Nakathila redeemed himself 9½ months after Shakur Stevenson out-boxed him in a largely uneventful, 12-round, 130-pound WBO interim championship match last June 12 at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas.
“He didn’t really bother me, the way he swung,” said Nakathila, who is a full-time police officer in Windhoek, Namibia’s capital city. “I just got back to my game plan, and I capitalized.”
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.