Ishe Smith Defeats Pawel Wolak

By Boxing News - 08/03/2008 - Comments

smith5456.jpgBy Chris Williams: Former contestant from the The Contender boxing reality television series light middleweight Ishe Smith (20-3, 9 KOs) easily defeated previously undefeated Pawel Wolak (21-1, 14 KOs) in a 10-round unanimous decision on Friday night at the Aviator Sports Arena, in Brooklyn, New York. The final judges’ scores were 97-93, 96-94 and 96-94. Smith, 30, dominated every round of the fight over the slow, offensively limited Wolak beating him as if he were a sparring partner. Wolak, originally from Poland, spent most of the fight pressuring Smith ineffectively on the inside, throwing weak shots with little speed.

He was often easily countered by the much quicker Smith, who had no problems landing punches on the wide open Wolak again and again. The judges seemed to be more than a little kind to Wolak, giving him rounds when he looked to have come close to winning none of them from what I saw of the fight. The only real suspense in the fight was whether or not Smith would tire himself out punching Wolak in the head, for he did it an awful lot in the fight without having to worry about any return fire from the weak-punching Wolak. Going into the fight, one would have thought that this should have been a competitive fight, but the real tip off should have been Wolak’s record, which showed that he had fought pretty much low quality fighters for his entire four year career. In reality, Wolak came into the fight with no real top flight opposition on his record, and hence his fight with Smith had mismatch written all over it from the very start of the fight.

Without any real power, Wolak’s only chance of winning was for him to somehow outwork Smith. However, that wasn’t going to happen because Wolak showed early on that he was mostly a pitty pat puncher, who often missed even at close range. Smith dominated the first three rounds, hitting the slow Wolak with big uppercuts and hooks to the head. Wolak didn’t seem bothered by the punches, and continued pressuring Smith, walking towards him constantly and throwing the weakest punches I’ve seen in quite some time.

I respect Wolak for his aggression he showed, because he showed courage by continually walking forward and taking shots. However, he wasn’t effective at his pressure and was mostly a punching dummy, getting hit nonstop and incapable of landing any real punches himself. As such, the fight was ugly and totally boring to watch. Nothing changed in rounds five though ten, except that Smith began throwing almost nothing but uppercuts.

Wolak was a total sucker for every uppercut that Smith threw, showing no ability to adapt to the shots and getting hit often. As good as the win was for Smith, we need to put the win in perspective. Wolak wasn’t a top 15 fighter like the type of fighters that have been beating Smith in recent fights. If Smith had been in with a fighter like Sergio Mora or Sechew Powell, he would probably lose as he has been doing as of late.