Alycia Baumgardner Shuts Out Elif Nur Turhan To Win IBF Lightweight Title

Alycia Baumgardner took the IBF lightweight championship from Elif Nur Turhan at College Park Center in Arlington, Texas, on Sunday, November 8, winning all ten rounds on all three judges’ cards. Each gave her the fight by 100 points to 90. Baumgardner, 32, had moved up from super featherweight to win a world title in a second division. Turhan, 31, lost for the first time in 15 professional contests. Neither woman went down.

Turhan had won the title by stopping Beatriz Ferreira last December and had defended it against Taylah Gentzen and Gabriela Tellez. Eight of her 14 wins had come inside the distance. She scaled 134.6 pounds to Baumgardner’s 133.8. The challenger, who had once held all four major belts at 130 pounds and still held three of them, had beaten Bo Mi Re Shin over ten rounds in April. As on that occasion, the rounds here lasted three minutes. That gave Turhan longer to press her attacks and Baumgardner longer to make her pay for missing.

They exchanged hard punches in the first. Baumgardner found the target with the straight right, while Turhan answered with hooks and made her strength felt when they came together. The champion drove Baumgardner towards the ropes, then swung over the top and missed. Turhan tried to close the gap again in the second. A counter right caught her coming forward, and two stiff jabs checked her later in the round, though she got in with a good left hook before the bell. Baumgardner was already landing first from a distance at which Turhan had to reach for her.

The third supplied the clearest chance of a stoppage. Baumgardner put a left hook into the body and followed with a straight right that sent Turhan back to the ropes on unsteady legs. She was going after her when referee Melva Santos stepped between them, mistaking the signal for the final ten seconds for the bell. Turhan stayed upright and got to her corner. “I hit her, I’ve seen her legs wobble,” Baumgardner said afterwards.

Baumgardner went back to her jab in the fourth and caught Turhan with straight shots and counters when the champion tried to come out of a corner. Two lefts snapped Turhan’s head back near the bell. Turhan had one of her better spells in the fifth, when she landed hooks and a right uppercut and kept punching in combination. Baumgardner took those shots, came back with an uppercut of her own and finished the round working the left hand. The judges gave her the round, as they had the previous four.

A left and a right sent Turhan off balance in the sixth, though she recovered and was still exchanging hooks by the end of it. Baumgardner forced her back again in the seventh, scoring to the body and sending the jab and straight right through the middle. Turhan was shaken, and there was more clinching in the second half of the round. By the eighth, her swings were losing their force. Baumgardner was still getting the left through, following with the right when Turhan missed and making time to go back to the body.

Turhan produced a pair of uppercuts in the ninth and came forward again, but Baumgardner answered at close quarters and finished a combination as the champion’s hands dropped. They were still trading on the ropes in the tenth. Turhan landed another short uppercut and a right hand. When she swung wide again, Baumgardner beat her to the target with a counter right. The challenger threw and landed more punches in that last round than in any other.

CompuBox credited Baumgardner with 195 punches landed to Turhan’s 50. She landed 103 power punches at 51 per cent, against 40 at 13 per cent for Turhan. Baumgardner, who prepared with Derrick James, said she had sparred more than 160 rounds in camp. She now has 19 wins, one defeat and one no contest, with seven wins inside the distance. Turhan has 14 wins and one defeat, with eight wins inside the distance.

Earlier on the Most Valuable Promotions card, Ramla Ali floored Mikiah Kreps in the third and took the vacant IBF and WBO super bantamweight titles by split decision. Skye Nicolson retained the WBC title at the same weight on points against Miyo Yoshida, and Irma Garcia unified the IBF and WBA super flyweight titles by outpointing Nataly Delgado.

Caroline Dubois, the WBC and WBO lightweight champion, was at ringside and put the question to Baumgardner herself. “Are we going to fight?” she asked. Baumgardner said she wanted to become undisputed at lightweight and reminded Dubois that she already had a champion in front of her. Dubois is due to meet WBA champion Stephanie Han in El Paso on February 20. Baumgardner has the one belt that will be missing from that contest.

What I liked was how little ground Baumgardner gave away. She’d take a short step back, let Turhan’s overhand go past and send the right straight down the middle. Turhan could bang, as Beatriz Ferreira found out, but she kept swinging from too far out.

In the third, Baumgardner went left to the body, right upstairs. Turhan’s legs went, and the referee mistook the warning for the bell. Turhan landed a good uppercut in the fifth when she finally got close enough, but Baumgardner turned out and got back behind the jab. I had no argument with the clean sweep.