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Commentary: Chamblin rocks house
Dan McDonald
If boxing fans in attendance Saturday at "Collision at the Coliseum" hadn't know the main-event fighters, they would have been confused.
One of the fighters in the women's super bantamweight (122-pound) feature bout was ranked in the world's top 10 by four different boxing organizations and has held two different world titles in the past two years. She also had 25 pro bouts under her pink boxing skirt, including battles with some of the top names in women's boxing - Kelsey Jeffries, Mia St. John and Jelena Mrdjenovich.
The other fighter had no belts, very few rankings (one No. 10 among featherweights by the WBC) and only one career bout out of 10 appearances against an opponent with a winning record - albeit that one against a world champion.
All Lafayette's Kasha Chamblin had going into Saturday was a lack of notoriety and a chip on her shoulder, and she proceeded to hit world-ranked and highly-regarded Donna Biggers with that chip and everything else she threw during an eight-round shutout at Blackham Coliseum.
Chamblin, despite her seeming lack of experience, was easily the more polished boxer on the way to winning every round on all three judges' scorecards (80-72 times three). She was off first with the jab, was on target much more often with an overhand right and was much better defensively against Biggers' ineffective, looping-punch attack.
"My jab's really fast from working with guys like Jason (Papillion, the former NABF junior middleweight champion who also won on Saturday's card)," Chamblin said. "They told me to capitalize on that. I've been working on that a lot, that and straightening up my right hand."
Both of them worked on Saturday. In fact, just about everything worked. It wasn't hard to tell which was the more classicly-trained boxer and which was hoping to land one roundhouse punch to maybe even up a one-sided fight.
Biggers (19-6-1) had knocked out 16 opponents in her 19 wins, 14 of them in the first two rounds. But "The Nature Girl" from Boiling Springs, N.C., never came close to getting Chamblin (10-1) into trouble.
"She caught me with some good shots," Biggers said, "but I don't think she won every round."
Maybe not. The fifth and sixth rounds might have been even after one of Biggers' looping lefts caught Chamblin on the elbow and hyperextended it. Other than that brief period, Chamblin controlled the pace from the start.
Two early overhand rights and a series of stiff jabs to Biggers' wide-open jaw set a first-round tone that rarely changed notes throughout "The Fighting Marine's" second-ever bout past four rounds. The only other time Chamblin had been scheduled for more than four rounds was in last December's eighth-round TKO loss to WIBF world featherweight champion Ina Menzer in Berlin, Germany, at 126 pounds.
"She said she saw the Germany fight, and that I was a lot better than that," Chamblin said after the win.
"She's better than I anticipated," Biggers said.
Chamblin's trainer and manager Beau Williford was equally impressed.
"Donna's fought at some heavier weights and she's used to getting hit by 135-pounders," Williford said. "Kasha was rocking her pretty good with a lot of shots, and every mistake Donna made she was making her pay for it."
"She was fabulous. We had actually expected a tougher fight. We knew Donna was tough as nails, but if Kasha followed the plan she could beat her. But I thought it would be somewhere around 5-3 or 6-2."
Instead, it was an 8-0 win, hometown judging aside, that could propel Chamblin to bigger things.
"She (Biggers) has been in there with the best," Chamblin said. "She's a gatekeeper. This was a tough fight for me, but it was the next step. I know there's definitely tougher fights out there for me."
"I'm hoping we can get a shot at a 122-pound title," Williford said. "I'm hoping tonight's performance doesn't scare the daylights out of some other people where we can't get that shot. But that's a good dilemma to be in."
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