O’Shaquie Foster made the second defense of his WBC super featherweight title, winning a split-decision over Abraham Nova in his Top Rank debut on Friday, February 16.
The bout was closer than expected and a tactical affair, one that showed off a trait that coach Bobby Benton has grown accustomed to with Foster; a flair for the dramatic.
Foster stopped Eduardo ‘Rocky’ Hernandez in the 12th and final round of a fight he was losing on the scorecards and in a close fight, Foster dropped Nova in the 12th round to edge out the victory.
Foster’s trainer Benton has talked about Foster gutting it out.
“Shock did what he always does,” Benton explained. “He finds a way to get through it, and I told him in the 11th round, we need to put him on his ass. He did and that just shows how good he is.
“The whole thing with him is being real with him. After most if not all of our fights, he says, ‘Thank you for being real with me’, and I go, ‘Look, I am not going to lie to you, you are not a fighter that needs to be pumped up’. I just told him this is too close. We could be down on one of these scorecards. He was like, ‘Really?’ I was like ‘Yeah.’
“He had [Nova] hurt in the 11th round. I need to watch it again, and I thought we had a pretty good 11th round, but all three judges gave Nova the round. That was kinda weird to me – we had him out.”
“The 11th round I was pushing on him [Foster], ‘We need the last two rounds’. Shock went to him, was landing clean shots, and I didn’t know the scores until [the fight ended]. So I was like, ‘Damn, they gave [Nova] the 11th round?’ The corner knew he was hurt, they kicked the water over to the middle of the ring and took his time cleaning up.”
The judges saw the bout a split decision in favor of Foster, 115-112, 116-111 for Foster and 114-113 for Nova; the knockdown didn’t define the victory, but sealed any doubt one might have had.
“The bottom line is Shock did what he needed to do to win,” Benton added. “Obviously we will make some adjustments with what we do with the weight cut and that will be that.”
The 30-year-old Foster is 22-2, with 12 KOs, whereas Nova is now 23-2, with 16 KOs.
