Jordan Gill became the new European featherweight champion today in London, which is a huge career achievement for the 27-year-old fighter. But the way it happened was something so wild, they wouldn’t even put it in a movie, because nobody would believe it.
In a competitive fight with French veteran and defending champion Karim Guerfi, Gill was dropped in the seventh round, but maybe even more damaging was something that happened moments after the fight resumed.
If you’re not a pro wrestling fan or someone who ever was one, you might know what a DDT is. It was a finishing move made famous by Jake “The Snake” Roberts in the 1980s, and has been a staple of pro wrestling ever since. Sometimes in fights, fighters will get tangled up and you see an approximation of what a DDT looks like when two trained wrestlers do it, but not really. “Haha, DDT,” we all say.
Here, Jordan Gill got himself straight up DDT’d by Guerfi:
Gill was really not quite right after that. His legs were gone, and he stuck himself in the corner because he just couldn’t move around much. He did land some good shots on Guerfi, but was looking bad to the point that it seemed like his corner or referee Thomas Walser had a real choice to make by late in the ninth round. He was developing huge swelling over his right eye and just didn’t look right.
In fact, this was the last comment I posted scoring the fight in our live thread, because what happened next happened while I was typing it out:
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Just before the bell was to sound to end round nine, Gill (27-1-1, 8 KO) landed a monster shot and knocked Guerfi (30-6, 9 KO) clean out:
It’s an unreal moment, one of those things that made you think back to the first fight between Diego Corrales and Jose Luis Castillo, and something all of us who saw it happen live will not soon forget.
Congratulations to Jordan Gill. That’s a highlight of highlights.