El joven peso medio Giovanni Rossetti destronó a Carlo De Novellis como campeón de Italia (Vídeo de la velada)
Young middleweight Giovanni Rossetti dethroned Carlo De Novellis as Italian champion (Video of the evening)
Daniel Pi
@BastionBoxing
Palahockey Guglielmo Fanticini, Reggio Emilia, Italy. Italian middleweight championship. De Novellis’ first defense.
In a duel between a young fighter and a veteran, the Italian champion Carlo De Novellis 9(0KO)-5(1)-1 lost his belt to prospect Giovanni «Nino» Rossetti 11(4KO)-1, who successfully passed this test dominating the fight before an eighth round TKO, thus taking his career to a new phase.
The motivated Rossetti, 20 years younger and with an advantage in height and reach, was more active than his opponent in this first title bout of his professional career, jabbing with some frequency as well as throwing some short combinations. Seeing that he was having success and that De Novellis was not offering much of an answer, Rossetti increased his number of power punches with hooks to the body, one-two-one combinations to the face, lead hooks upstairs and downstairs and other shots that his opponent was not able to answer properly with his sporadic and ineffective counteroffensives.
Thus, soon the fight became very one-sided. In fact, if Rossetti had stepped on the gas he would have possibly put his opponent in trouble in no time, but he let him breathe too much by spacing out his attacks, so De Novellis was able to deal with the punishment and, very eventually, even land a counter.
In any case, the match was clearly being won by Rossetti who, as soon as he decided to launch an offensive, landed good hands and made it evident that he was being superior. Furthermore, as the rounds went by it became obvious that De Novellis was going to be increasingly worn down and that his chances of coming back were practically non-existent.
Rossetti continued to work with his straight hands, his hooks and his uppercuts without going all out on the attack, but with enough pace to make things more and more difficult for De Novellis, who finally, in the eighth round, was repeatedly hit with flurries of straight punches until the referee took him to the doctor and he stopped the fight.
Considering that he became champion and dealt his first stoppage loss to De Novellis, Rossetti fulfilled his objective. Even so, although in a certain way it was a good victory, it cannot be overlooked that Rossetti had all the possible advantages in this bout and that he now needs to face a test against an opponent in good shape, young, motivated and with certain qualities to gauge better what his level really is. In this sense, the Italian middleweight belt should make it easier for him to reach the type of clash he needs.
Below, official video of the event, courtesy of the Federazione Pugilistica Italiana. The De Novellis-Rossetti matchup begins around 58:00.