Has the 41 year old finally met his match?
French-Canadian star and longtime light heavyweight titleholder Adonis “Superman” Stevenson (29-1-1, 24 KOs) has been a polarizing figure in the sport since picking up his title in 2013 to say the least. Actually, that may be too generous. The word polarizing suggests that there have been two competing opinions on the power puncher. While I don’t doubt that Stevenson has his local fans in Montreal, the larger boxing circle had been fed up for some time with his consistently substandard opposition in his title defenses.
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. While “Bad” Chad had recently been embarrassed in a drop down to super middleweight against all time great Andre Ward and would go on to clearly be a shot fighter afterward, he was at the time still considered the sport’s arguable top light heavyweight. The first round finish looked like the birth of a star.
Since then Adonis has defended his WBC title nine 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. None of the defenses were against the top few fighters in the division.
Andrzej Fonfara 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. Instead they waited for Fonfara’s stock to fall with a KO1 loss to Joe Smith Jr and a near loss to a shot Chad Dawson had he not pulled out the miracle last round finish.
The rematch was as farcical as it looked on paper with Adonis topping Fonfara inside a round. At the time I bluntly referred to the matchup as a “stupid fight” at every chance and it delivered on that promise. Thankfully, “Superman” and his devastating straight left finally fought another top contender in May, five years into his title reign. Badou Jack seemed the better fighter too in their matchup, but he fought such an odd fight that the Haitian born Montreal star took the fight fairly on the cards regardless at 40 years old. Jack just didn’t move his hands in the first half of the fight. While Adonis was largely getting beaten up in the second half, he did just enough win a couple rounds and escape with a win due to all the easy first half of the fight rounds that he already had in his bank.
Is Oleksandr Gvozdyk (15-0, 12 KOs) going to make the same mistake? I doubt it. Is he as good as Badou Jack overall though? I doubt that too. The former Ukrainian Olympian trains with and is of the general mold of his more famous fellow countrymen in Vasyl Lomachenko and Oleksandr Usyk. The bronze medalist shows a lot of their style and flair in his fights too, though he is overall a step behind them most of the time.
There have been fights in which Gvozdyk looked spectacular like against Yunieski Gonzalez and Craig Baker, but there were also fights in which he looked like he didn’t have it all together technically. Tommy Karpency hurt him badly early and little known Mehdi Amar was able to catch him with straight shots much more often than I’d like in his last bout from March. Yet, there are also times when Gvozdyk puts on the sort of virtuoso boxing performance that we expect from who he is so strongly associated.
That’s really the technical detail about this fight that I expect to be most important. Who boxes off the back foot and who comes forward? Both men traditionally have had their successes moving backwards while dissecting a more aggressive opponent. Stevenson looks to set up his monstrous left while Gvozdyk is more clinical with a variety of shots. When Oleksandr has come forward, however, he’s been vulnerable to straight shots. Other than probably PPV headliner Deontay Wilder, Adonis Stevenson has the most vicious straight shot in boxing. Gvozdyk cannot get caught with it. Conversely, while Adonis had shown little over his reign other than countering with his explosive straight left, when push came to shove against Badou Jack he found real surprising success on the inside. Apparently Superman is capable of fighting there.
Stylistically I think this one actually favors Adonis Stevenson. Oleksandr Gvozdyk has a weakness of walking into straight shots which is exactly what the titleholder wants. Adonis also has shown some serviceable infighting lately if the Ukrainian does do the right thing and instead draw him forward. Yet, 41 is 41. Adonis Stevenson is old in boxing terms. He hasn’t taken a ton of damage and started later in life so he is a young 41, I guess, but again: 41 is 41.
I have a hard time picking a 41 year old fighter to defend his title against a man ten years his junior with Oleksandr Gvozdyk’s pedigree. Adonis Stevenson is never out of any fight thanks to his absurd power. He showed he carries it late too by hurting Badou Jack in the 10th round to steal a frame that he very much needed on the cards last time. In doing so Adonis also showed a lot of heart by rallying at all given his exhaustion level. Oleksandr Gvozdyk won’t have won this until the final bell has rung, but I suspect he will bank most of the rounds along the way. He’s the more diverse technical fighter overall. Plus, 41 is 41.
This one was supposed to be paired with the return of Julio Cesar Chavez Jr, but unsurprisingly that bout was called off last minute. The new start time is at 7:45 PM for free on Showtime and their social media outlets to advertise the Wilder-Fury PPV which starts at 9 PM.
