By Dan Ambrose: WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis “Superman” Stevenson (28-1, 23 KOs) has announced that he’ll be facing #7 WBC contender Andrzej Fonfara (29-4, 17 KOs) in a rematch on June 3 on Premier Boxing Champions in Canada. Stevenson won’t be facing #10 WBC Sean Monaghan like what previously the fight that was in the pipeline for the Canadian fighter. Fonfara, 29, is an upgrade to Monaghan, but not much of one though. Stevenson already beat Fonfara by a 12 round unanimous decision three years ago in May 2014 in beating him by the scores 116-109, 115-110 and 115-110.
Fonfara knocked Stevenson down early in the fight. The match was one-sided after that with Stevenson dominating Fonfara. It wasn’t close enough to where there was a big demand from the boxing public to see Stevenson and Fonfara do it again. A rematch between Stevenson and Fonfara made sense 3 years ago shortly after their fight in 2014, but makes no sense now. It’s too late for the two of them to fight each other now.
What makes Fonfara an especially bad option for Stevenson is the fact that he was recently knocked out in the 1st round by Joe Smith Jr. last June in Chicago. Smith Jr. blasted Fonfara out easily in that fight. Fonfara did come bac to win his last fight in stopping Chad Dawson in the 10th round on March 4th last month, but that wasn’t a quality opponent.
Fonfara’s fortunes have turned sour for him, and he’s with his loss to Smith Jr. and he’s done nothing to rebuild his career from that loss. For Fonfara to be getting a title shot off after his recent loss to Smith Jr., it makes it look like he’s being rewarded for losing rather than winning.
It's now official, on June 3rd rematch against @andrzej_fonfara in canada 🇨🇦 . The undercard will be interesting as well. @premierboxing pic.twitter.com/F4kNu7GCjS
— Adonis Stevenson (@AdonisSuperman) April 8, 2017
This is yet another voluntary defense for Stevenson, who has been largely facing a lot of weak contenders and not the dangerous guys since he won the WBC title 4 years ago in beating Chad Dawson in 2013. There have been 7 successful defenses for Stevenson since that time in him beating Tavoris Cloud, Tony Bellew, Fonfara, Dmitry Sukhotskiy, Sakio Bika, Tommy Karpency and Thomas Williams Jr. Many boxing fans think Stevenson is just milking his WBC 175 lb. title by facing the most beatable guys that he can get rather than facing the talented fighters that would give him trouble.
The fans point to the fact that Stevenson hasn’t fought Sergey Kovalev, Eleider Alvarez, Artur Beterbiev, Oleksandr Gvozdyk, Joe Smith Jr., Sullivan Barrera, Andre Ward, and Marcus Browne. Stevenson could very well beat all of those fighters. We don’t know because he’s not fighting them. Stevenson is fighting the arguably weaker fighters in Cloud, Bika, Sukhotskiy, Karpency, Williams Jr., Fonfara and Bellew.
After his loss to Stevenson, Fonfara put together some good wins over Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., Nathan Cleverly and Doudou Ngumbu. That momentum was blown apart by Fonfara’s 1st round blowout loss to Joe Smith Jr. on June 18, 2016. Fonfara showed zero respect for Smith Jr’s power in the early moments of that fight. Instead of being cautious with Smith, Fonfara plowed ahead, throwing power shots, as if he felt he could knock him out quickly. Smith nailed Fonfara with a big right hand to the head that put him down on the canvas. After the badly hurt Fonfara got back to his feet, Smith Jr. finished him off quickly in dropping him a second time.
The way that Smith Jr. took care of Fonfara in that fight, it would appear that he’ll be able to knock him out again and again if the Polish fighter is willing to face him in repeated bouts. I don’t think that would be a smart thing for Fonfara to do. His whole game is built around out-slugging his opponents, and he’s met his match in Smith Jr. For Fonfara to beat Smith Jr,, he would need to be able to take his big punching power a number of rounds to try and knock him out. Smith Jr. showed that Fonfara cannot handle his power.
The good news that comes out of Stevenson facing Fonfara again rather than someone higher level, is that he’ll need to fight his #1 WBC mandatory challenger Eleider Alvarez in his next fight after that. Stevenson can’t put Alvarez on hold for the remainder of his career. Stevenson needs to make his mandatory defense against Alvarez sooner rather than later.
Hopefully, the WBC pushes Stevenson to defend his title against the winner of the Oleksandr Gvozdyk vs. Yunieski Gonzalez fight soon as well, because that would give the boxing world a chance to see a good fighter with some skills facing Stevenson. It would be a shame if Stevenson is able to make voluntary defenses for the next 3 to 4 years without fighting another mandatory in between then, because we’ve already seen from his past fights that he’s not facing dangerous opposition.
Fonfara can punch. He’s got good power, but he’s very, very slow and upright. In his fight with Stevenson, he was get lit up over and over with huge shots from the southpaw. Fonfara took a lot of punishment in that fight. I don’t know if Fonfara can take a lot of additional punishment in a rematch. I think that’ll be very hard for him to last long enough in the fight to land his own big shots.
After Stevenson started to box Fonfara in the second half of their fight, it was one-sided and not really interesting to watch. Stevenson has Fonfara figured out now, and I can’t see the rematch being competitive at all. You can argue that’s why Stevenson is likely interested in facing Fonfara. He’s got to know that this is someone that he can easily beat.
It’s a not a fight where there is a question mark whether Stevenson can win it or not. He showed last time that he was a much better fighter than Fonfara. Fighting Fonfara again is kind of like Manny Pacquiao fighting Tim Bradley in their 2nd fight despite having gotten the better of him in their first fight.