by David P. Greisman

Isaac Chilemba had a good performance against Vasily Lepikhin on Saturday night, while Lepikhin laid the proverbial egg, at times staying on the ropes, throwing next to nothing and waving Chilemba in. Chilemba won the decision, while Lepikhin suffered his first pro loss.

“I cannot not even begin to explain it,” Kathy Duva of Main Events, which promoters both men, said of Lepikhin afterward. “You saw him before. That fight on paper, we thought it was just going to be the sleeper of the night, a terrific fight. Sometimes that’s why they fight them on canvas. Sometimes they just don’t come out quite as well on canvas.”

She contrasted that with how some people were predicting an easy fight in the main event between Sergey Kovalev and Jean Pascal, which turned into a more competitive battle.

“Sometimes we get lucky and sometimes we don’t,” Duva said. “With Lepikhin we just didn’t get lucky.”

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