Robert Easter Jr. vs. Rances Barthelemy Ends In A Draw With WBA “Regular” Title On The Line
Even with a secondary world title on the line, Robert Easter Jr. and Rances Barthelemy weren’t able to convince anyone that either was the winner when the two faced off in the main event of a Showtime-televised card.
After 12 rounds that were mostly uneventful, the fight ended in a split draw with each fighter getting a 115-113 score from one judge with the third judge scoring it 114-114. The newly-created WBA “Regular” lightweight title was on the line and with no winner, the title is still vacant.
Both men threw a lot of punches in the fight, but barely connected on any of those punches. Neither fighter landed at least 10 punches in any round for the entire bout. In terms of jab work, the two former world champions each threw more than 200 jabs but only connected on seven percent of those punches. Only 106 punches were landed in the entire fight.
After the fight, Easter and Barthelemy stated that they want to have a rematch against each other as soon as possible. This was Easter’s first fight since losing his IBF title to Mikey Garcia back in July 2018 while Barthelemy, also a former IBF lightweight titleholder, was looking for his first world title win since 2016.
The fate of the WBA’s secondary lightweight title remains to be seen as there is not much need of a secondary titleholder at 135 pounds. The WBA already has a lightweight world champion in Vasiliy Lomachenko, who is now considered the “Super” champion and recently defended his title against mandatory challenger Anthony Crolla.
