Atif Oberlton Beats Deon Nicholson By Split Decision

Atif Oberlton kept his unbeaten record by a split decision over Deon Nicholson at Albuquerque’s Kiva Auditorium on Saturday night, boxing most of the ten rounds with an injured left arm. Esther Lopez and Mark Sanchez both scored it 98 to 92 for Oberlton. Anthony Romero had Nicholson ahead 96 to 94. It was a wide difference of opinion about a fight in which there were plenty of rounds with room for one.

“I fought the whole fight with one arm, really,” Oberlton said afterwards. He put the injury in the first round. His corner worked on the left biceps between the fourth and fifth, and he was stretching and shaking the arm in the rounds that followed. The right jab became his principal weapon. For a southpaw who had stopped most of his opponents, it was a different sort of assignment, and for long stretches Nicholson let him get away with it.

The light heavyweights boxed without a title at stake in the chief support to Abraham Perez’s interim WBA flyweight defence against Yankiel Rivera. The DAZN bill was promoted by Salita Promotions, Legacy Promotions and King’s Promotions. Oberlton, 28, came in with 17 wins and 14 knockouts and left with an eighteenth victory. Nicholson, 36, came in with 23 wins, 19 by knockout, and one defeat. This was his second loss and ended a run of nine wins since Efetobor Apochi knocked him out in a cruiserweight title eliminator in 2021.

Oberlton, the Philadelphia southpaw trained by Tom Yankello, stood 6ft 3in, four inches taller than Nicholson. He had gone ten rounds for the first time in August, taking every round on all three cards against Roamer Alexis Angulo in Atlanta. That came after eight successive wins inside the distance, the last against former super middleweight contender Carlos Góngora, whose corner pulled him out after five rounds in May. Nicholson, from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, trains with Jay Deas and had worked in camp with Deontay Wilder. He had been due to box Artur Beterbiev in Riyadh a year ago, but that fight fell through. In Albuquerque, he had a chance to check the progress of a contender ranked fifth by the WBA.

Oberlton set the range from the first bell. He kept putting the right jab out and made Nicholson do his work from farther away than he wanted. Nicholson tried to establish his own jab, but the taller man got his lead hand in first often enough to keep the exchanges short. The second and third followed much the same pattern. There was little sustained punching from either side, and Oberlton’s advantage lay in where the fight was being fought.

By the middle rounds, the shortage of left hands from Oberlton was conspicuous. He could still put the right out and make Nicholson start again, but there was seldom a hard rear hand coming behind it. Nicholson had an opening to make the fight more physical if he could get past that lead. He was too often left outside it, and the periods when Oberlton was tending to the arm came and went without Nicholson taking firm control.

Nicholson got more use out of his jab at the start of the seventh. By the end of the round he had developed a swelling above his left eye. Oberlton was busier in the eighth and ninth, and Nicholson still had difficulty getting close enough to sustain an attack. There was some success for Nicholson with the looping right in the last. Both went the distance, and Romero’s card showed how differently those rounds of sparse action could be read. Lopez and Sanchez each found eight for Oberlton, while Romero gave Nicholson six.

Oberlton was pleased with what he had managed with the injury and said he would fight Nicholson again once he had the use of both arms. Promoter Dmitriy Salita spoke afterwards of a world title being within reach. The first question for Oberlton is the condition of the arm that had so little part in the win. He had come in looking to show what he could do against a puncher. He ended up showing how much he could get done with his jab.

I had Oberlton winning. With his left arm hurt, he used the right jab to keep Nicholson at a distance where he couldn’t do much. Every time Nicholson tried to close the gap, that jab made him check his feet and start again.

Nicholson got his own jab going in the seventh. I’d have liked him to stick it in Oberlton’s chest and step in behind it. That would have made Oberlton defend at close quarters more often. Instead, the looping rights came too late. Oberlton got busier after the seventh and took the rounds that were there for him.