photo courtesy of www.klitschko.com -By Erik Schmidt: Using mainly powerful shots, heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko (51-3, 45 KOs) took out the tall 6’5″ Tony Thompson (31-2, 19 KOs) in an impressive 11th round TKO tonight in Hamburg, Germany. Wladimir picked up momentum as the fight progressed, punching a little harder in each of the rounds until the 11th round, when he went all out with big punches and eventually crushing Thompson with a big right hand that sent Thompson crashing to the canvas on his back.
The fight was stopped when Thompson didn’t make it off the canvas in time to beat the count. It fortunate for Thompson that he chose to stay down, because he would have likely taken even more punishment if he had tried to continue to fight on. At this point, Wladimir was fighting at his optimal level, not punching in the reserved, conservative manner that he had fought in most of the rounds.
Thompson, 36, who had looked good in recent fights with TKO wins over Luan Krasniqi and Cliff Couser, was in over his head against the equally as tall but much more powerful Wladimir Klitschko. The power shots of Wladimir, mostly right hands, acted as a deterrent as it made Thompson fight much more cautiously and at a distance than he customarily likes to fight. He did make it hard for Wladimir to land his jab, by keeping his hands held high and throwing a high number of jabs himself. In fact, Wladimir was out-landed in the fight by a small margin by the 36 year-old Thompson, whose shots swelled up both the fight cheek and left eye of Wladimir.
However, it was Wladimir harder shots that were winning all of the rounds. If you’ve heard the term ‘right hand crazy’, this would be a fitting example of how Wladimir fought tonight, for he used his right hand to do much of the punching in most of the rounds. He wanted to use his left jab, but mostly used in sparingly, saving it for later in the fight when Thompson began to look rather fatigued. Unlike most of his fights, Wladimir seemed to grow stronger as the rounds went by rather than growing tired and losing his energy. It was like watching a rerun of his fight against Ray Mercer in which Wladimir just kept coming, feeding him with rights one after another and not letting up until Mercer was bloody and battered.
Thompson did a decent job in the early going, in which he took the fight to Wladimir and landed short hooks and jabs. Most of the time he would miss, but the few shots that would get through did substantial damage to Wladimir’s face around his eyes and cheeks. Wladimir was cut on his right eye in the second round after clashing heads with Thompson. The cut didn’t bother him, and if anything, it made Wladimir fight even harder. It took a while for Wladimir to get his rhythm, however, because he seemed to miss a lot of his punches in the early rounds.
His right hand seemed to more than make up for his misses, though, as he would connect with it over and over again to the head of Thompson. The crowd noise greatly encouraged Wladimir, giving him more energy when he was landing well with right hands. Often the crowd cheering would cause Wladimir to throw multiple right hands one on top of the other. Most of the time, Thompson wouldn’t even try to throw hard shots, perhaps trying to avoid getting caught while loading up on his shots. Even when he did hit Wladimir hard on a couple of occasions, it wasn’t nearly hard enough to put him in any kind of distress.
In the 10th and 11th rounds, Wladimir began to really load up on his right hand shots, a point probably not missed by Thompson, who looked like he was dog tired by then. Thompson tried to push the fight to Wladimir in the last two round, after taking a tongue lashing from his trainer, but Wladimir met him with huge right hands and quickly turned both rounds into a route. The two fighters fell to the canvas in the 10th round. Thompson got up favoring his right leg as he limped visibly. In the 11th, Wladimir landed a storm of punches, loading up with all of them as he pursued Thompson around the ring trying to score a knockout. Wladimir’s efforts paid off when he connected with a huge right hand that sent Thompson down. The referee then counted Thompson out just as he was staggering to his feet.
With this win, Wladimir moves on to a likely title defense for his IBF mandatory undefeated Alexander Povetkin, who recently won the right to fight Wladimir by winning the IBF tournament with wins over Chris Byrd and Eddie Chambers. It’s doubtful that Wladimir would be allowed to take on another fight before facing Povetkin.