Although Scottish featherweight Nathaniel Collins goes by the nickname “The Nightmare”, tonight at the SSE Hydro in Glasgow he came face to face with his own nightmare in the form of Spain’s Cristobal Lorente. The pair had met previously, of course, when battling to a draw in October, but on this occasion Collins found an opponent even tougher, even busier, and even more nightmarish than before.
Last time, they produced a fight for the ages, trading punches and rounds until the final bell forced them to part. However, this time, the fight was far less competitive and Lorente, of the two, was the one much improved. So well did he box, in fact, Lorente will have been shocked and disappointed to discover that one of the three judges somehow scored the fight against him (we’re looking at you Giovanni Pozzi: 116-111). Thankfully, the other two got it right, scoring the fight 115-112 to the former European champion from Barcelona.
With the win, Lorente not only takes Collins’ WBC silver title, but he has also earned himself a shot at WBC featherweight champion Bruce Carrington.
To say he “earned” the shot is perhaps an understatement. Busy from round one to 12, Lorente would not be denied tonight in Glasgow. He knew, having experienced frustration last year, that nothing this time around could be taken for granted and that he could afford to take no rounds off.
Early on, he set the tone, pumping out his long levers from his orthodox stance, while Collins, the southpaw, waited to counterpunch. This was not unlike the pattern the first time they fought, but the difference in fight two was that Lorente was throwing clusters in an effort to stop Collins countering his single shots. By doing so, Lorente would often smother and overwhelm Collins just as he looked to initiate a counterpunch. This meant that rather than counter Lorente, the home favourite would instead feel his head snapped back, or his back touch the ropes. Whichever it was, Lorente was able to quickly gain a foothold by virtue of throwing more and showing more in the way of aggression.
The first six rounds were close, with Collins’ sharp left crosses catching the eye and Lorente’s work rate doing similar. But then, in round six, Collins appeared to get his breakthrough when he knocked Lorente down with a sharp right jab. It wasn’t a particularly clean or hurtful shot, and owed more to their feet tangling, but it was still enough to swing the momentum in the direction of Collins, whose boost in confidence was apparent after it landed.
That said, Lorente showed no signs of being wounded or deterred. If anything, he was even more incentivized by the knockdown, knowing he had to now work twice as hard and throw twice as many punches to reduce any deficit. By the end of the round, he had managed to force Collins back on to the retreat and was unsettling him with combination after combination. By the time the bell rang, it was hard to figure out which of the two had had the better of things in that round.
All we knew for sure was that round six, just as it was last time, was both the best round of the fight and a pivotal moment in the fight. Here, in the rematch, it was the trigger for Lorente, not Collins, to take his game up a notch and never look back. He did this by utilizing his jab a lot – thrown long from mid-range – and also by investing a lot in body shots, especially with the right hand thrown to Collins’ ribs. This strategy ensured that Collins was constantly preoccupied by a left jab and then in danger of being weakened by body shots up close. More than that, Lorente’s habit of seldom throwing single shots guaranteed that whenever the pair would find themselves in an exchange it was invariably Lorente whose work would stick in the mind when the round ended.
There was a big effort from Collins in round 10, but even that was matched by Lorente, who had a knack for finishing rounds in a manner that made it easy to forget what Collins had done earlier in the round. This was another effective habit of the visitor. It was something he demonstrated in round 11, which is when Collins should have been coming on strong, and also in the final round, by which time it was, for Collins, too late.
“I felt nervous with the knockdown, but my team said to me in the corner, ‘Don’t change the game plan, you need to win all the rounds to achieve victory,’ and I tried to do this,” said Lorente, now 21-0-3 (8 KOs), after the fight. “The plan was to throw body shots and don’t fight Collins’ fight.”
Better than not fighting Collins’ fight, Cristobal Lorente presented the unbeaten favourite with the worst possible style for a southpaw counterpuncher eager to gain control. Not only did he refuse to give Collins any sort of control, or even a moment’s peace, he then outpunched him and refused to stop punching until the fight was over and there was no doubt as to who had won. Truly, in every sense, a nightmare opponent for Nathaniel Collins, 17-1-1 (8 KOs).
