Pawel Wolak retires – Boxing News!

By Boxing News - 12/07/2011 - Comments

Image: Pawel Wolak retires - Boxing News!By Jason Kim: Junior middleweight contender Pawel Wolak (29-2-1, 19 KO’s) has reportedly retired following a 10 round unanimous decision loss to 31-year-old fringe junior middleweight contender Delvin Rodriguez (26-5-3, 14 KO’s) last Saturday night at the Madison Square Garden in New York. Wolak, ranked #3 WBA, #4 WBC, #5 WBO, #7 IBF, lost by the scores 98-91, 98-92 and 100-90.

Wolak looked listless against Rodriguez last weekend after getting off to a pretty good start in the first two rounds of the fight. It looked as it was going to be a repeat performance of their last fight in July, which was highly competitive and resulted in a 10 round draw. However, Wolak seemed to run out of gas and power after the 2nd round and failed to throw enough punches in the second part of the fight.

At the same time, Wolak kept his elbows too far apart and was wide open for Rodriguez’s uppercuts and right hooks all night long. In the last three rounds of the fight, Rodriguez began to throw extended combinations and was catching Wolak cleanly with punch after punch. It was sickening to watch because Wolak seemed either tired or just not motivated. The 10th round was especially brutal for Wolak, as Rodriguez unloaded with a heavy bombardment of combinations to the head of Wolak and had him looking badly hurt for almost the entire round. It’s a shock that the fight wasn’t halted because a lot of referees would have put a stop to the fight seeing a fighter take so much punishment the way that Wolak did.

It’s hard to imagine that Wolak will stay retired because he’s ranked high and he did such a great job in beating former WBA junior middleweight champion Yuri Foreman by a 6th round stoppage in March of this year. However, putting Wolak in with the tall and lean Rodriguez seemed to be a bad style match-up for Wolak and you have to wonder at the wisdom of putting him back in with this guy so soon after the first fight last July.

Rodriguez is a decent fighter but struggles against pure boxers. However, he does well against brawlers like Wolak and perhaps Wolaks’ promoter should have realized that and matched him against a fighter more in line with his style of fighting.



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