Moscow, Russia – WBC #8 ranked super middleweight Pavel Silyagin (9-0, 4 KOs) retained his WBC Silver belt for the first time beating a dangerous opponent in Isaac Chilemba, albeit in a mostly forgettable twelve-round fight.
The bout took place at the famous Krilya Sovetov arena in the central part of Moscow and was promoted by Sergey Strelkov of the Dynamo Boxing Promotions.
Former two-time world title challenger Chilemba, now 33, has a long-standing tradition of fighting Russian boxers (Silyagin was his eighth in total and his fifth in a row) both in and outside of Russia. In his latest fight, Chilemba, who had previously been outpointed by Sergey Kovalev and Dmitry Bivol in title match-ups, and scored a draw against local favorite Fedor Chudinov.
Silyagin, 28, was coming off the longest lay-off of his young career. His last outing was in May 2021, when he outpointed Abdallah Paziwapazi.
Former amateur standout Silyagin immediately utilized his vast technical arsenal to cause troubles to his opponent. The South Africa-based Malawian couldn’t pull the trigger, often missed and ate jabs constantly in the first. Slowly the flow of the fight got more even but Silyagin’s advantage in workrate and sharpness was well felt. Chilemba scored with some of his trademark awkward punches but they hadn’t been deterring to the Russian until the mid-point.
At the mid-point, Silyagin’s workrate hit its lowest, while Chilemba caught breezes of his second wind. It didn’t last for long, and the Malawian couldn’t capitalize on it, losing to Silyagin in the majority of the later rounds. Both boxers used clinches to some extent and they also jabbed more than throwing power punches. At no moment was either of the combatants ever stunned, and both boxed in their usual manner. It was youth, home turf and workrate that helped Silyagin prevail.
Final scores were: 120-108, 119-109 and 118-110 – all for the Russian. Chilemba drops down to 26-8-3, 10 KOs. He is just 2-6-1 since winning over Vasiliy Lepikhin in March of 2015.
