Ladies and gentlemen, the dumbest matchup of the summer is upon us. Tomorrow night at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Adonis Stevenson will bravely rematch a man that not only has he already beaten convincingly, but a man who has since been knocked out in the first round and then took a come from behind last round knockout to beat a completely shot Chad Dawson. That man is Andrzej Fonfara.
To say that Adonis Stevenson’s (28-1, 23 KOs) title reign has been a disappointment would just be stating the obvious at this point. Stevenson, a Haitian transplant who has fought his career out of Quebec, won the title with much fanfare via a shocking first round stoppage of Chad Dawson in 2013.
Since then he has defended it seven times. Two of the opponents, Dmitry Sukhotskiy and Tommy Karpency, were extremely weak defenses. The other defenses weren’t as bad as those two, like beating Tony Bellew before his cruiserweight success, but even Tavoris Cloud and Sakio Bika were coming off losses.
Andrzej Fonfara (29-4, 17 KOs) was one of Stevenson’s better defenses the first time, more seeming so after the fight when the Polish challenger had been surprisingly competitive. Well, competitive isn’t the right word, really. Adonis Stevenson dominated that fight. Through eight rounds he had basically swept the cards and dropped Fonfara twice.
Out of no where Stevenson was dropped and hurt in the ninth, but he recovered well in the tenth and then fought on even terms over the last two rounds. The fight became exciting, but Fonfara never really came close to finishing Stevenson and he rightfully lost wide on the cards. Had they immediately made the rematch it would have been a little weird, but the fight was fun down the stretch so people would have gotten behind it.
They didn’t. Fonfara initially elevated himself with an easy win over a known name in Julio Cesar Chavez Jr, but I do believe we no longer have to pretend that beating Chavez qualifies as a good win. He picked up an actual good win next against British contender Nathan Cleverly, but then disaster struck. Almost a year ago now Andrzej Fonfara was destroyed inside a round by the then largely unknown Joe Smith Jr. He returned against the shell of what used to be Chad Dawson in March, but it took a last round knockout to avoid a second devastating upset defeat as he was down in the fight.
This is what this fight is. It is a titlist that has disappointed the boxing public by refusing to take on the top few fighters in the division who is now rematching a man who he already clearly beat and is coming into the fight with basically no momentum.
It’s just a stupid fight.
Adonis Stevenson is 39 now, so I guess he could hit the wall literally any fight at this point. For future reference, however, it is a sign of a stupid fight when one fighter’s only shot is the other guy suddenly being bad at boxing when he has always been good at it before.
The co-main event is a little better, I guess. Faint praise there though. Unbeaten Colombian Eleider Alvarez (22-0, 11 KOs), fresh off his career best performance in a TKO 5 over Lucian Bute, takes on former titlist Jean Pascal (31-4-1, 18 KOs) over twelve rounds in the opening bout. If Pascal has anything left this would be a good matchup, but it is hard to imagine that being the case after the pair of savage beatings he took from Sergei Kovalev. I hope I am wrong, but I expect him to take another beating here.
I am just going to take this as another opportunity to complain about the main event though. Eleider Alvarez, a good fighter, is Adonis Stevenson’s mandatory challenger. Stevenson paid Alvarez money to step aside so that he could rematch a clear win again recent Joe Smith first round knockout victim Andzrej Fonfara when Joe Smith Jr was also available. Just wrap your head around that.
With all the said, the first fight turned out to be fun by the end. I don’t think this one will, but hopefully Fonfara can have some moments again. The card takes place at 9 PM tomorrow Eastern on Showtime.
