photo courtesy of www.klitschko.com –By Eric Thomas: IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko successfully defended his heavyweight titles tonight with a tougher than expected 11th round TKO of American challenger Tony Thompson (31-2, 19 KOs) at the Color Line Arena, Altona, in Hamburg, Germany. With Thompson suddenly looking tired and beaten late in the 10th round, Wladimir finally turned on his offensive firepower at the start of the 11th round and succeeded in flattening Thompson, 36, with a big right hand.
Thompson laid there for a few seconds on his back, looking as if he wouldn’t be getting up, but then tried to make it up but didn’t make it up quite in time before referee Joe Cortez stopped the fight at 1:38 of the 11th round. Both Thompson and Wladimir were badly marked up on each of their faces from the shots they threw at one another, with both of them also being cut over the fight as well. As expected, Wladimir threw the much harder shots in the fight, punishing Thompson with powerful right hands in every round of the fight. At the time of the stoppage, Wladimir had a commanding lead and looked to have won almost all of the rounds of the fight, except for the 1st round in which Thompson appeared to edge it with his much softer combinations.
Uncharacteristically, Wladimir was unable to control the fight with his jab, a punch in which he didn’t throw often in the early rounds of the fight, instead spending much of the time trying to hit Thompson with lead right hands. At that, Wladimir was quite successful, and was able to keep Thompson from coming forward as he often likes to do. However, Wladimir seldom threw his left hook, which is perhaps his best weapon in his arsenal of punches. On the few occasions that Wladimir did land the punch, it landed with a loud impact, causing the German crowd to roar with approval.
Thompson did well, despite losing most of the rounds, up until the 7th when Wladimir began pulling away by landing big shots. At the end of the 7th round, Wladimir landed a big right hand followed by a powerful jab, both punches seeming to take the fight out of Thompson. From the 8th round on, Wladimir loaded up with right hands and tagged Thompson repeatedly. Wladimir was still forgoing his jab and left hook, previously his primary weapons for most of his career, and using just his right hand to do most of the damage.
As powerful as Wladimir’s right hand is, that’s all he needed against the likes of Thompson, who didn’t have an equal weapon to fire back and Wladimir and make him bring out more of his offensive tools from his toolbox. With each increasing round, Thompson began to look more like a faded fighter than a top contender, and had almost nothing to throw back at Wladimir from rounds nine until the bitter end in the 11th. Near the end of the 10th round, Wladimir bulled Thompson against the ropes, stepping on his left shoe in the process and falling hard on top of Thompson as they both tumbled to the floor.
It’s unclear whether Wladimir actually hurt Thompson during the fall, but Thompson acted sure as if he was hurt as he got up and limped around the ring. The German crowd didn’t seem to buy it, though, and booed him. It seemed to me that Thompson was simply tired, wanted to get a rest and perhaps get an extra point from Cortez, who is known for penalizing fighters for roughhouse tactics. In this case, Wladimir didn’t appear to be trying to hurt Thompson and didn’t realize he had stepped on his shoe.
At the start of the 11th round, Wladimir came out on fire, looking as if he was smelling blood, throwing hard shots with both hands, much harder than he had punched in all of the previous rounds of the fight. In fact, it was like watching a younger version of Wladimir, for that’s how he always fought before taking on Emanuel Steward as his trainer. Thompson wasn’t ready for that kind of firepower, and he took big punishment as Wladimir teed-off on him with left hooks, right hands and power jabs, driving him from one side of the ring to the other.
Finally, Wladimir landed a perfect right hand that dropped Thompson to the canvas. It was immediately clear that Thompson wasn’t going to be getting up from the shot, and sure enough, he was counted out by referee Joe Cortez. It looked as if Wladimir probably could have taken Thompson out in the 1st round if he had fought in the same manner as he did in the 11th, for the shots that Wladimir was throwing were very hard, as I said previously, much harder than anything he had been throwing all night long.
I doubt Thompson, or any other heavyweight in the division, could have stood up to those kinds of shots for more than a round or two without folding up. Thompson looked completely unready for those kinds of power shots, and was essentially mowed down by them.