Adonis Stevenson vs. Andrzej Fonfara – Results

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By Jim Dower: WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis “Superman” Stevenson (29-1, 24 KOs) massacred a badly over-matched Andrzej Fonfara (29-5, 17 KOs) in a 2nd round stoppage in a pointless rematch on Saturday night on Showtime Championship Boxing at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Canada. Stevenson dropped the 29-year-old Fonfara late in the 1st round.

At the start of the 2nd round, Stevenson continued to pound Fonfara with left hands until the Polish fighter’s trainer Virgil Hunter signaled to referee Michael Griffin to stop the fight. The official time of the stoppage was at 0:28 of round 2. It was a terrible fight, and was always going to be a really bad one. Fonfara had recently been knocked out in the 1st round by Joe Smith Jr. last year.

Fonfara didn’t deserve to be fighting for a world title unless losing by a 1st round knockout is now a criteria for fighting for a world title. It was a sad match-up and a horrible fight. It’s unclear if Showtime has any input in the fights they televise. In the future, they should focus on televising more competitive fights. Watching blast apart guys like Fonfara, Thomas Williams Jr. and Tommy Karpency isn’t very interesting because none of those guys had any chance against him.

Stevenson used a really simple fighting strategy to beat Fonfara. He waited with his left hand and countered him at every opportunity. Once Stevenson had Fonfara hurt, he continued to nail him at will with left hands to the head. Fonfara made it easy for Stevenson by rushing forward straight into a left hand. The shot badly hurt Fonfara. Stevenson then poured it on with big lefts until Fonfara went down.

Fonfara made the same mistake against Stevenson as he did in his fight with Joe Smith Jr. in rushing forward straight into a big power shots. Smith Jr. knocked Fonfara down twice in the process of knocking him out in the 1st round. It’s unfortunate that Fonfara didn’t learn from his knockout loss to Smith Jr. You don’t rush forward into the teeth of a power puncher like Smith Jr. and Stevenson. I guess old habits die hard with Fonfara. Hopefully after tonight’s loss, Fonfara will learn from his mistakes and correct them in his future fights.

The Stevenson-Fonfara II fight should have been stopped at the end of the round, as Stevenson was bludgeoning the badly hurt and defenseless Fonfara with nothing left hands to the head. Instead, the fight was allowed to continue. There was no way that Fonfara was going to be able to recover in between rounds. Fonfara’ Sure enough, at the start of the 2nd round, Stevenson unloaded on the badly hurt Fonfara with left hands until the fight was halted.

There was no way that Fonfara was going to make it out of the 2nd round because he wasn’t even trying to hold onto Stevenson to keep him from punching. Fonfara’s trainer Virgil Hunter had instructed him not to throw any punches in round 2. He wanted Fonfara to be totally defensive. Instead, we saw Fonfara not holding and just taking head shots. You would think that he would know that he needed to clinch. He never tried to clinch at all.

What was interesting after the fight is how Stevenson was booed by his own boxing fans when he chose not to call out the winner or the loser of the Andre Ward vs. Sergey Kovalev fight. The Canadian boxing fans wanted to hear Stevenson call out the winner of the Ward-Kovalev fight, but he decided not to do it.

“I know Fonfara is very dangerous. He’s a very good fighter,” said Stevenson after the fight. “I take my time and I finish the job. I’m the greatest at 175. I don’t have to call out anybody. I’m Superman. Whoever, I’m ready for anybody,” said Stevenson.

The crowd didn’t seem to be too excited about Stevenson refusing to call out the winner of the Ward vs. Kovalev fight. If Stevenson isn’t interested in fighting the winner of that fight, then it means he’s going to need to fight his WBC mandatory challenger Eleider Alvarez, who defeated Jean Pascal by a 12 round majority decision in the co-feature bout on the card. That’s a winnable fight for Stevenson, but possibly a tough one. The boxing public might not be as interested in seeing Stevenson fight Alvarez. It might interest the Canadian boxing fans, but probably the U.S fans, as they don’t know Eleider Alvarez is. He’s an unknown with the casual boxing fans in the U.S.

Stevenson had already beaten Fonfara by a 12 round decision in 2014 in a mostly one-sided fight. Fonfara knocked Stevenson down in round 9. Fonfara fought well in the 8th and 9th rounds. All the rest of the rounds were clear rounds for Stevenson. The fight wasn’t close enough for a rematch, but I don’t think tonight’s fight had anything to do with the previous fight. I think it was just a good excuse for Stevenson to milk his title a little bit more with another easy title defense. There are a lot better contenders in the World Boxing Council’s top 15 rankings than Fonfara.

Artur Beterbiev and Oleksandr Gvozdyk would like to fight Stevenson, as would Joe Smith Jr. Those are dangerous guys. I’m not sure that Stevenson could take them out the way that he did with Fonfara, who fought a dumb fight. If Stevenson beats Alvarez, it won’t be surprising to see him go back to fighting weak opposition with his voluntary defenses. It’s too bad because Stevenson would be so much more popular than he is today if he were to fight good opponents instead of picking out soft guys that are slow, hittable and poor boxers. When you beat someone like Fonfara, you’re supposed to move on and fight other fighters. You don’t go backwards just so you can a sure thing win. I don’t want to see Stevenson fighting Tommy Karpency again or Thomas Williams Jr. just because they landed a couple of punches before being knocked out by Stevenson.