By Nate Anderson: In a fight that showed how messed up the alphabet rankings are, Rafal Jackiewicz (32-8-1, 8 KOs) gave a boxing lesson to highly ranked welterweight Jackson Osei Bonsu (28-2, 23 KOs), defeating him by a one-sided 12-round unanimous decision on Sunday night at the MOSiR, ul. Krakowska 72, in Kielce, Poland, to capture his EBU (European) welterweight title. Bonsu, 27, ranked #6th in the WBO, #8 IBF, #8 WBA and #3 in the WBC, was knocked down in the 7th round and was never really in the fight, and was easily out-boxed by the more skilled Jackiewicz over the course of the 12-round fight in Poland. The final judges’ scores were 116-112, 117-110 and 114-113.
Jackiewicz, 31, though not nearly as powerful as Bonsu, he had much better overall boxing skills than the fighter from Ghana, which was apparent almost immediately as the fight begun. Bonsu, who perhaps chose to fight the non-top 15 ranked Jackiewicz as a stay busy fight, soon found himself in a dog fight as he was getting hit cleanly by a shower of right hands from Jackiewicz in round one. Throwing a lot of right hands, and doubt and triple jabs, Jackiewicz gave Bonsu fits. When Bonsu would attempt to land his big power shots, he found most of them missing because of Jackiewicz’s excellent defensive tactics in which he would either duck the shots or block them with his gloves.
If Bonsu thought he was facing a B-class fighter in Jackiewicz, he was dead wrong; Jackiewicz looked better than 95% of the current top welterweights in the division, and would probably be more than a handful for champions like Andre Berto and Joshua Clottey. While I think Paul Williams and Antonio Margarito would probably easily defeat Jackiewicz, Clottey and Berto would find themselves in a serious fight and would have to work extremely hard to get the win. In Bonsu’s case, a fighter with even less skills than Berto and Clottey, he was in serious trouble against Jackiewicz.
Jackiewicz boxed well in the second round, hitting Bonsu and keeping him from hitting back by moving out of the way of his big shots and ducking many of them. In the third round, Bonsu came out with much more energy, throwing hard shots with both hands and trying hard to take Jackiewicz out. Bonsu did land a few more shots in the round, but he was just barely more effective than he had been in the first two rounds. The problem wasn’t his power, it was the fact that he wasn’t able to land effectively enough against Jackiewicz for it to matter. Every time Bonsu would miss a shot, he’d get countered by Jackiewicz with right hands to the head.
After losing the fourth round, Bonsu finally appeared to do enough to win a round in the 5th when he worked hard throughout the round, throwing dozens of punches and going all out at the end of the round to land some good shots. Even then, with Bonsu fighting at his maximum level, he barely appeared to win the round, because he continued to miss a lot of punches and take short right hands to the head from Jackiewicz. Bonsu looked out of his class, like he didn’t belong in the same ring with Jackiewicz.
Bonsu continued pressuring Jackiewicz in the 6th round, throwing a lot of shots and stalking him around the ring. However, Jackiewicz came on in the last minute with a high amount of pinpoint shots to the head to steal the round.
IN the 7th round, Jackiewicz staggered Bonsu with a hard jab and then dropped him to the canvas with a right hand. He attempted to finish Bonsu after he got up but was unable to come up with another shot hard enough to put Bonsu down for the count. If he had merely jabbed him, arguably Jackiewicz’s best weapon in the fight, he probably would have taken him out, but instead he threw mostly right hands and it had no effect.
In rounds eight and nine, Jackiewicz continued his mastery of Bonsu, hitting him with beautiful right hands and dodging Bonsu’s bigger shots. At the end of the 9th round, a confused and hurt Bonsu walked to the wrong corner after having taken several right hands in the last seconds of the round.
Jackiewicz easily dominated Bonsu in rounds ten and eleven, making him miss with his big windmill shots and continuing to counter him with shorter right hands to the head.
For a fighter with eight losses on his record, Jackiewicz fought incredibly well, looking more like unbeaten fighter than the one who had suffered all those losses. However, most of the defeats had occurred much earlier in his career, four to five years ago when he was just starting out in the professional ranks. It appears that Jackiewicz has improved vastly since that time, since he’s been undefeated for the past four years.
Bonsu should have taken this information when he chose to fight him, because as it turned out, Jackiewicz was much better than his record would have you believe. Indeed, an argument could be made that he belonged in the top 10 along with Bonsu based on his actual talent rather than his not so impressive record.