Less than a week since reports broke about the WBA possibly doing away with "Interim" titles, we saw a rematch between Panamanian Robert Vasquez (32-5-2, 22) and Filipino John Mark Apolinario (17-2-3, 4) for the WBA interim Bantamweight title. Rather surprisingly the title remained "vacant" as the two men fought to a draw, the second successive bout.
The two men, who fought for the first time just 4 months ago, drew when they first met in Argentina with neither man managing to get an upper hand for any stretch of time. This time however things looked different, things seemed to be flowing wonderfully for the Panamanian who had previously held titles at both Light Flyweight and Flyweight.
At the mid way point in the bout it was very easy to feel that Vasquez was in a clear lead. He wasn't beating the ever loving snot out of Apolinario but he was clearly winning more rounds than he was losing and he was at home with the fans getting well behind him. According to Argentinian television station "TYC Sports" Vasquez had bagged 5 of the first 6 rounds and was surely on his way to the title.
Vasquez continued to look a class better than his lesser known opponent in the second half of the fight as he showed his experience and seemed to sweep the second half of the fight to what appeared on paper to be a clear decision. Vasquez's domination of the bout had seen Argentinian TV score it 119-109 in his favour and seemingly saw him claiming the title by clear decision. The came the judges decision which rather oddly saw the bout much, much close than most scoring it 116-112 each way and 115-115 to leave us a majority draw.
Interestingly when the men first met it was viewed that Apolinario was robbed, this time however it seems that Vasquez was denied a clear victory in a shocking case of boxing karma.
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