By Nate Anderson: Number #11th ranked IBF light middleweight contender Lukas Konecny (37-3, 19 KOs) defeated Brazilian Luiz Augusto Dos Santos (24-15, 20 KOs) by a 5th round TKO when Santos, 36, injured his left shouldering the 4th round and couldn’t answer the bell for the 5th round. Santos, who goes by the nickname of “Tyson,” had major problems competing with the busier, better offensively skilled Konecny, who easily controlled the action up until the fight was stopped in the 5th.
Konecny, 30, a former member of the 2000 Czech Republic Olympic Team and who completed his amateur career with an impressive 230-25-2 record, was a level of above Santos in terms of boxing ability. Other than the first round, in which Konecny did very little until the last minute of the round, it was an essentially a one-sided fight with Santos constant punishment at the hands of Konecny.
Santos, a southpaw, came out fast in the 1st round throwing a lot of jabs and moving around the ring in a constant circle. Though he had good power in his left hand, he rarely used it in the round, holding it back as if he were afraid to tire himself out if he exerted himself for anything length of time in the round. Konecny did little in the round except to study Santos and look for openings. With about a minute to go in the round, Konecny finally opened up with a few shots.
In the second and third rounds, Konecny opened up more with his offense, throwing some good left hands. However, he was limited mostly to throwing one shot at a time, his left hand, and loading up as if he were looking to score a knockout. I can’t blame him for wanting to load up, because he has little power and needs to put a lot of effort into each shot to make them count. He seemed to do a little better in the 3rd round, though, throwing many more two punch combinations to the head of Santos. At that, he began somewhat predictable, as he threw left-right shots one after another, but Santos didn’t have anything to answer him back to cause him to want to change his repetitive style of fighting.
In the 4th round, Santos’ body language seemed to suggest that he didn’t want to be in there fighting. Later in the round, Santos suddenly injured his left shoulder after taking a right hand from Konecny in the side. It seemed like a good shot, and Santos immediately stopped fighting, leaning over and wincing in pain. After the fight being briefly stopped by the referee to make sure that Santos was alright, it was allowed to continue until the end of the round. However, Santos looked in constant pain with his left arm dangling at his side much of time. In between round, the fight was stopped as Santos was in too much pain to continue fighting.
All in all, a good performance from Konecny. Once he finally got his offense in gear, he had little problems with Santos, beating with combinations to the head and outworking him for the rest of the fight. However, Konecny seems to fight in one gear, has little speed and only average power. I’m not sure how far he can go beyond his current #11 ranking in the IBF. To be sure, he looks good, and has sound boxing ability, but his hand speed is slow, he looking mechanical and lacks true knockout power. Once he steps up again, like he did in his previous fight against WBO light middleweight champion Sergiy Dzinziruk, Konecny will probably find himself on the losing end again.