Oleksandr Gvozdyk stops Adonis Stevenson in eleven rounds to capture the WBC light heavyweight title
Adonis Stevenson at 41 years-old, would attempt a tenth successful defense of his WBC title. Oleksandr Gvozdyk as the mandatory, competed in his first world title bout.
As both men awaited in the ring to be announced, the first red-flag was seeing how dry Gvozdyk was. Additionally, he didn’t make any attempts to keep his body warm in preparation for the fight. This usually means the fighter will have a slow start due to the need to get his blood flowing.
The Recap
As a result, he looked extremely stiff in the opening round. The champion came out in the opening stanza pressing behind a sharp jab while looking to set up his powerful straight left hand.
In round two, Stevenson started to land the left hand that clearly got the attention of the challenger.
In the opening seconds of round three, Gvozdyk dropped Stevenson with a beautiful straight right-hand. It wasn’t called however, as the referee claimed the fighters’ feet were tangled. Replays would show that it was a clear knockdown.
Rounds four through seven appeared to go the way of the challenger. Gvozdyk started landing more right hands, while forcing his older adversary backwards. All the same, a clearly fatigued Stevenson was able to land a few noticeable body shots.
By far, round eight was the best round of the fight for Gvozdyk. He was able to outbox the champion and repeatedly land effective right hands.
The ninth round was extremely close, as both men didn’t provide much distance – making it a toss-up round.
Round ten saw the champion have a reprieve as he landed a hard straight left hand, that sent the challenger into the ropes. You can argue that Stevenson deserved credit for a knockdown, as the ropes held him up. Nonetheless, a missed called earlier for Gvozdyk balances things out. The challenger appeared to hurt Stevenson briefly at the end of round ten.
In round eleven, Gvozdyk landed a nice left hook-right hand combination that snapped the head of the champion back. Sensing he was hurt, Gvozdyk jumped on Stevenson, dropping him with the referee quickly waving the fight off.
A five year reign as champion comes to an end for Stevenson as a new reign starts for Gvozdyk.
By: Jerrell Fletcher
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