By Aaron Klein: Using mostly his jab alone, IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko (52-3, 46 KOs) stopped challenger, two-time WBC heavyweight champion Hasim Rahman (45-7-2, 36 KOs) in the 7th round tonight at the SAP-Arena, in Mannheim, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Klitschko, 32, dropped Rahman with several left hooks and a right hand at the start of the 6th round, then followed this with a full round of battering a hurt Rahman.
At the start of the 7th, Rahman’s beating continued, leading to referee Tony Weeks stepping in and halting the fight at 0:44 of the 7th round. Rahman, 36, fought as if he weren’t there mentally, and just going through the motions. Unlike his shocking 2001 5th round stoppage of then champion Lennox Lewis to win then IBF/WBC heavyweight champion, Rahman fought with little intensity tonight and seemed old, slow and not interesting in fighting. Klitschko, unfortunately, fought in his usual dull, safety-first style of fighting, throwing mainly jabs, clinching often and throwing few right hands.
Initially, Wladimir threw a lot of left hooks in the first couple of rounds, but after having a good connect percentage in those rounds, he began to miss more and more with the punch. Soon he abandoned it altogether, focusing almost exclusively on throwing jabs with an occasional right hand mixed in for good measure. Maybe Rahman might have had a chance, but whatever chance he had, he blew it by going to the ropes in the 3rd round and lying against them and trying to fight off of them.
This allowed Wladimir to bomb him with jabs and right hands and punish him badly in the round. Rahman could do little in rounds four and five, missing badly whenever he would try to close the distance to land his right hands and jabs. Though only four inches shorter than Wladimir and having just as long arms, Rahman looked tiny compared to him, and was unable to reach the bigger Wladimir with his punches.
For his part, Wladimir stayed on the outside, using his powerful jab and pounding away at Rahman. As it turns out, the jab was all Wladimir really need to win this fight, although it would have been much more interesting to the boxing fans if he had let loose with a few more power punches in the fight instead of resting on his jab. In the 6th round, Rahman looked spent as he went out for the start of the round, looking defeated after having been hit with some especially hard jabs in the previous round.
Wladimir immediately nailed him with three short left hooks, hurting Rahman, and then putting him down with a short right hand. The punches looked hardly powerful, but Rahman, by this time, had been softened up from having eaten a ton of jabs in the five prior rounds and his punch resistance had to be greatly diminished. After getting up, Rahman went back to the ropes and took a terrible amount of punishment from Wladimir for the remainder of the round.
Perhaps the only reason that Rahman made it out of the round, though, was because Wladimir continued to fight timidly as always, throwing a mess of jabs rather than the power punches that were needed to end matters. Playing it safe is probably too ingrain for Wladimir to stop fighting him at this point, but it sure took out the joy of what should have been a 6th round stoppage rather than a 7th round.
In fairness to Wladimir, he did try to throw some power shots, but missed badly with many of them. The ones that got through, mostly right hands, were thrown at too close range for Wladimir to get everything into the punches. In the 7th round, Wladimir continued throwing jabs until hurting Rahman with a left hook disguised as a jab, staggering him. Wladimir then followed up with a right and then another left hook, prompting for referee Tony Weeks to step in and halt the fight at 0:44 of the 7th.
“Hasim Rahman got punished. I have to give him some credit. He kept coming in every round. To be honest with you, I was expecting him to be a lot better…Anytime soon, we will see Povetkin-Klitschko in 09. I haven’t heard from David Haye tonight, because he’s been so loud. Where is he? So anyway, I think an exciting time in the heavyweight division is coming. We have Alexander Povetkin, we got David Haye, got Chris Arreola, we got someone else probably. So it’s going to be exciting.”
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