By Nate Anderson: Hard-punching undefeated light middleweight contender James Kirkland (22-0, 19 KOs) made short work of his Nigerian opponent Eromosele Albert (21-2, 10 KOs), stopping him in the 1st round to win the vacant WBO NABO light middleweight title on Saturday night at the Buffalo Bills Hotel, in Primm, Nevada. Fighting on the same card as light middleweight prospect Alfredo Angulo and super featherweight sensation Yuriorkis Gamboa, the 24 year-old Kirkland seemed to make the biggest statement of three with his stunning 1st round TKO of the veteran Albert, knocking him down twice in the process.
Kirkland, known for his fast knockouts of his opponents, came out on fire in the first round, immediately taking the fight to Albert and hitting him with hard lefts to the head. Albert, 33, hardly had time to throw one right hand before suddenly being knocked to the canvas with a right-left combination from Kirkland. Albert never saw the second punch, the left hand, coming for he looked surprised as laid there on the canvas bleeding from his forehead. He got up, staggered around, blinking his eyes hard and appearing very hurt. Referee Joe Cortez, perhaps wanting to be fair to Albert and give him at least a small chance to try and recover, allowed the fight to continue on. Though, really, the fight should have been stopped at this point because Albert was out of it and there was no way he was going to be able to get hit with more than couple of monstrous lefts from Kirkland without visiting the canvas once again in the round. You could see it in Albert’s eyes, he just wasn’t there, not in the condition to get tagged with any more huge shots from Kirkland.
It wasn’t as if Kirkland had hit him all that much in the round, but the last two shots that he did hit him with, were enough to last Albert for the fight. They were brutally hard and very fast. After checking Albert over for a second, a wary referee Joe Cortez allowed Albert to continue fighting. As soon as the action resumed, Kirkland strode up to him and landed a big left hook, sending Albert down to the canvas for the second and final time in the round. At this point, Cortez had seen enough and moved in and halted the fight at 1:06 of the 1st round.
Albert, like most fighters, was upset with the stoppage and seemed badly to want to fight further. However, he seemed to be out of his head still from the knockdowns and didn’t understand how hurt he truly was. He probably knows by now that it was a wise decision by Cortez to stop the fight when he did, for Kirkland would have likely disconnected Albert’s head from his body if given another chance to wind up with another free shot on the near defenseless Albert.
The knockout in addition to Kirkland’s speed and power, reminded me somewhat of a younger version of Mike Tyson. Kirkland hits incredibly hard and doesn’t give his opponents much chance to get their shots in before knocking them down. Indeed, Kirkland only landed 10 punched during the entire fight, whereas Albert only landed a paltry three shots.