When Bruce Boyington touched gloves at the outset of the fifth and final round of his CES MMA featherweight title defense against Dan Dubuque last Friday night, he had no idea who was ahead on the judges’ cards.
“Nobody knew who was going to be winning going into that last round, and even after the last round we still didn’t know,” Boyington said. “But I was adamant about making sure that I was the one on top at the end of it and pushing the pace.”
At least two of the three judges apparently acknowledged Boyington’s late push, declaring the Milford native and Brewer resident the winner and still champion by a split decision with three unique opinions.
One judge awarded the fighter nicknamed “Pretty Boy” four rounds, one judge gave him three rounds and the third scored the fight for Dubuque, with Boyington winning just two rounds.
“Every round was pretty close,” Boyington said. “If I was confident or he was confident at any point of the fight we’d have been naive, I’m just glad I came out on top.”
Boyington left the cage at the Connecticut Convention Center in Hartford, Connecticut, with a cut over his left eye, but the biggest injury he had to deal with during the fight occurred three weeks earlier.
Boyington won the CES MMA title last August by defeating Sean Soriano via second-round submission despite suffering a torn medial collateral knee ligament during training just 10 days before that fight.
The injury was in check as he prepared for the Dubuque bout, but a freak accident as he was returning home from a training trip to Blackhouse MMA in southern California three weeks before fight night re-aggravated the knee.
“I was in the Philadelphia airport and there was a sign from a coffee shop upside down on the floor that I didn’t see,” he said. “I went to turn and my feet stuck on the sign because it had Super Glue on it. I twisted sideways on it and my knee popped and I fell right out of my sandals.
“It was just fine until then.”
As Boyington continued to work out for the Dubuque fight, his knee continued to ache.
“Unfortunately I had to do something or I wouldn’t make weight so I’m getting on the treadmill or an elliptical and it was killing my knee every time I’d do it,” he said. “It was very painful and it never got better so I went into this fight worse than my last fight as far as my knee goes.”
The injury depleted the assortment of kicks Boyington normally has available to battle Dubuque, who entered the fight with an 8-2 record and four consecutive victories. But the two battled back and forth for five, five-minute rounds in the main event of CES 56.
“My coaches were spot on as far as watching film and telling me what to expect,” said Boyington, who trains at Titan Athletics in Brewer. “If anything, Dan is different in his approach so it was a little hard to figure out, especially without my kicks.
“Certain kicks I couldn’t throw because of my knee so that left me a little one-dimensional with my hands.”
Boyington faced an additional challenge in the final round when he was cut above the left eye by an accidental head butt.
“If it was earlier in the fight there’s a good chance they might have stopped it,” Boyington said. “(Blood) was all through my eye and I couldn’t see anything, but it was toward the end of the last round and thank God for that because if they had stopped the fight because I had a cut on my eye I would have been devastated.”
The 40-year-old Boyington, now 17-11 in a professional MMA career that began in 2009, is looking forward to a summer of healing.
“I’m just gonna’ chill out for a little bit,” he said.
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