Byrd Defeats Sandow, Thompson Stops Serin

By Erik Schmidt: 10 months after being humiliated in a 9th round stoppage loss to Shaun George in May 2008, former IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Chris Byrd (40-5-1, 21 KOs) defeated German Matthias Sandow (4-3, 3 KOs) by a 4th round stoppage in a scheduled eight-round bout tonight at the Hanns-Martin-Schleyer Halle, in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg.

Byrd, now 38 and fighting as a cruiserweight, completely outclassed an inexperienced Sandow, hitting him with counter shots through four rounds. Without getting much resistance from Sandow, Byrd put him out of his misery with a flurry of shots in the 4th round.

Byrd caught Sandow in the corner and unloaded on him with 15 unanswered shots before it was stopped. Sandow emerged with a bloody nose at the time of the stoppage. Byrd previously defeated Vitali Klitschko by a 9th round stoppage in April 2000.

In other action on the card, heavyweight contender Tony Thompson (31-2, 19 KOs) stopped Turkish journeyman Adnan Serin (19-9-1, 7 KOs) in the 5th round tonight. Thompson, 37, punished the German based Serin with powerful straight left hands, jabs and right hooks before the stoppage.

With Serin taking a lot of hard shots from Thompson, Serin’s trainer threw in the white towel in the 5th round. Both Thompson and Byrd worked as a sparring partner for his fight tonight with Juan Carlos Gomez.