Tomasz Adamek coming out of retirement for Przemyslaw Saleta

By Boxing News - 07/27/2015 - Comments

adamek53 - CopyBy Dan Ambrose: Former two division world champion Tomasz Adamek (49-4, 29 KOs) will be coming out of a yearlong retirement to face Przemyslaw Saleta (44-7, 22 KOs) in a 10 round bout on September 25th at the Przemyslaw Saleta at the Atlas Arena in Lodz, Poland.

According to ESPN.com, Adamek inked the contract for the fight against Saleta last Friday with Main Events promoter Kathy Duva. She signed the fight deal with Polsat, a Polish broadcaster last Friday. It’s unclear if this is just a one-time thing for the 39-year-old Adamek or if he’ll choose to continue his career after this fight if he gets the victory.

“It’s up to him to decide if he wants to retire, not me,” Duva said via ESPN.com. “This is a novelty fight in Poland because they are both big names there. Whatever Tomasz does, he has earned the right to do what he wants and to go out how he wants to go out.”

Adamek moved up to the heavyweight division in 2009, beating the likes of Eddie Chambers, Chris Arreola, Steve Cunningham, Nagy Aguilera, Michael Grant, Dominick Guinn, Travis Walker, Kevin McBride, Vinny Maddalone, and Jason Estrada. Adamek didn’t fight guys like Kubrat Pulev, Tyson Fury, Bryant Jennings, Deontay Wilder, Carlos Takam, Lucas Browne and Dereck Chisora.

Adamek, who clearly isn’t cut out to be a heavyweight, was beaten in his last two fights by Artur Szpilka and Vyacheslav Glazkov in 2014. The writing was already on the wall before those fights that Adamek didn’t belong at heavyweight when he was wiped out by WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko in a one-sided fight, and had to struggle badly to defeat Eddie Chambers by a controversial decision that very boxing fans agreed with. Rather than retiring, Adamek should have moved back down to cruiserweight to see if he could continue to find success in that weight class like he’d done in the past. However, Adamek bulked up to 225 in fighting at heavyweight, and taking off that weight to get back down to 200 pounds to fight at cruiserweight might have proven to be impossible for him to do without being weight drained.

Besides that, the money is arguably better at heavyweight than at cruiserweight, and it’s doubtful that Adamek would want to take a huge pay cut in moving back down in weight, even if it meant that he had a better chance of success.

Adamek previously held world titles at both light heavyweight and cruiserweight, but at heavyweight he was just too tiny to compete against the giant heavyweights like Klitschko, and not good enough to conclusively beat the smaller heavyweights like Chambers, Szpilka and Glazkov.

Saleta hasn’t fought since 2013 when he stopped a past his best Andrew Golota by a 6th round knockout. Before that, Saleta had retired in 2006 and hadn’t fought in the previous seven years.

Adamek v. Saleta fight is pretty much an old-timers fight. It’ll be a big deal in Poland, but elsewhere it won’t likely interest too many fans other the ones that will want to see how good Adamek looks. If Adamek decides to fight beyond this one fight and look to get another world title fight, then he’s going to need to be extra careful to avoid certain fighters in the top 15, if he even chooses to fight any real contenders. If Adamek faces someone that has some talent, he’ll likely be beaten and that’ll make it all but impossible for him to get a world title shot before he ages out.

I think Adamek isn’t over-the-hill in terms of his skills. In his losses to Glazkov and Szpilka, Adamek looked like the same fighter he’d always been. It’s just that he fought two guys that were better than the weak opposition that Adamek had been beating previously. Adamek’s win over Arreola came in a fight in which Arreola broke his left hand early in the fight and was forced to fight with just his right. Even then, it was still a close fight. I think Adamek would have lost that fight if Arreola didn’t get injured.

If Adamek continues to fight, I think he can still beat the 2nd tier fighters that he was exclusively facing since 2009, but he’s obviously going to have major problems if he tries to fight someone in the top 15 with any kind of skills, size or punching power. Even some of the 2nd tier heavyweights would likely beat Adamek as well. That’s not because Adamek is old; it’s more of a case of a combination of Adamek not being a legitimate heavyweight, and the heavyweight division getting a lot better than it was when Adamek moved up in weight in 2009.



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