By Nate Anderson: Polish heavyweight Albert Sosnowski (44-2, 27 KOs) shockingly stopped 35 year-old Danny Williams (40-7, 31 KOs) in the 8th round of a scheduled 10-round bout on Saturday night at the York Hall, Bethnal Green, in London. The ending came suddenly, when Sosnowski dropped Williams with a powerful left hook at the start of the 8th round. It was a perfect punch, thrown with a lot of power, almost guaranteeing that Williams would find it virtually impossible to make out of the remainder of the round given the amount of time left in the round.
Williams groggily got to his feet and was met with a storm of punches from Sosnowski, who staggered Williams with a big left-right combination, causing for referee Richard James Davies to step in between them and halt the fight at 1:17 of the 8th round.
Following the fight, Sosnowski said “When I fight with good boxers, my skills are good but when I fight with bad ones, I don’t do as well.”
Williams, who had won his last three fights, was hoping to use this fight to slingshot him into title contention one more time. Instead, however, he finds himself in deep trouble career-wise. At 35, it’s unclear whether he can rebound from this to get in range of another title shot.
Sosnowski started off well in the first round, showing good movement, an excellent jab and hard right hands against Williams, who seemed surprised at Sosnowski’s work rate and movement. The round belonged entirely to Sosnowski, as he hit Williams often with right hands to the head and proved too quick for him, at least during this part of the fight, to get hit with his long right hand attempts.
In the second round, Sosnowski was still proving much too quick and agile for Williams, moving out of the way of his big power shots and hitting him in return with combinations. Near the end of the round, Sosnowski landed a hard right hand to the head of Williams. The third round was close, as Williams landed some hard right hands to the head of Sosnowski.
However, like in the two previous rounds, Sosnowski continued to move well around the ring, hitting Williams with hard shots and staying out of the range of his big right hands. In the fourth round, there was a lot of wrestling going on with Williams looking increasingly frustrated at his inability to land his punches against Sosnowski.
At one point, Sosnowski pushed Williams to the ropes and bent him over the ropes roughly. For this, Sosnowski received a warning from the referee. The remainder of the round, Sosnowski dominated Williams with hard punches to the head and outworking him by significant margin.
In the 5th round, Williams came back well, landing frequent jabs and right hands. It was Williams at his finest as he wasn’t merely trying to slug it out with him and was focusing more on boxing, which Williams is quite good at when he puts his mind to it.
In the 6th round, however, Williams began to look tired, bleeding from his mouth and showing swellings underneath his left eye. His punch output dropped off dramatically, as if he had punched himself out from the last round. It seems incredible that Williams would be tired, though, because he had done little other than throw jabs in the 5th round.
Perhaps it was Williams’ age that was showing its effects on him, as he looked lethargic in the 6th and basically gave the round away to Sosnowski. However, Williams came back rested in the 7th, and tagged Sosnowski with a high volume of hard right hands. Sosnowski, to his credit, showed a good chin and weathered the storm of right hands.
A lesser fighter, however, would have probably gone down from the massive amount of power rights that Williams landed in the round. In the 8th round, Sosnowski surprised Williams with a tremendous left hook at the start of the round, connecting cleanly and sending Williams to the canvas.
Though Williams made it off the canvas, he had virtually no chance of lasting out the round, because there was too much time and he was too badly hurt to clinch his way through it. He initially tried clinching, but Sosnowski easily threw him off of him and continued landing punches, much shorter ones, thankfully for Williams’ sake.
Barely able to walk, Williams valiantly tried to land a couple of punches, but was met with uppercuts, hooks and right hands from Sosnowski. Referee Richard James Davies then stepped in and halted the bout before Sosnowski could finish Williams off.
Comments are closed.