By Manuel Perez: Fringe heavyweight contender Chazz Witherspoon (24-1, 16 KOs) took out the brawling Adam Richards (21-2, 14 KOs) in the 8th round on Saturday night at the Vanderbilt University Memorial Gymnasium, in Nashville, Tennessee. Trailing badly in the fight going into the last round, Witherspoon, 27, landed a huge sweeping left hook in the 8th that badly hurt Richards, snapping his head back from the impact and staggering him.
Witherspoon then followed up with a flurry of uppercuts, hooks and right hands that staggered Richards a second time, prompting for referee Bill Clancy to step in and halt the action at 1:29 of the round.
For Witherspoon, the knockout saved him from what appeared to be an almost certain loss, as he was unexpectedly being dominated by Richards through the first seven rounds, looking to have lost six of the rounds by a wide margin.
Witherspoon, who had recently been stopped by heavyweight contender Chris Arreola in the 3rd round five months ago in June, was having huge problems with the shorter, 6’2” Richards, who was using the same game plan that Arreola had employed to defeat Witherspoon months earlier.
Instead of allowing the taller, long-armed Witherspoon to fight on the outside where he likes to use his long reach to jab and throw power shots, Richards stayed on top of him, sticking close and fighting mainly on the inside where Witherspoon was much less effective with his shots.
At close range, Richards, a classic inside fighter, dug to the body with hard hooks and threw uppercuts to the head of Witherspoon. In the later rounds, Witherspoon began working harder at getting some distance between him and Richards in order to get extension on his shots and keep Richards from landing.
It was only partially effective, though, because Richards often quickly wormed his way back inside where he was able to continue to give Witherspoon a lot of problems with his punches. In the only round that Witherspoon appeared to win, the sixth, he stayed on the outside and jabbed Richards from far away and prevented Richards from getting inside on him.
However, Witherspoon’s success would be short lived as Richards once again planted himself on the inside in the 7th round, staying in close and pounding Witherspoon with hard combinations to the head and body during the round.
Witherspoon fought hard, but like in the other previous six rounds, he proved to be an ineffective inside fighter unable to match Richards’ superior power and work rate at close range.
In the 8th round, Richards’ suddenly looked exhausted and stopped punching for the most part. This allowed Witherspoon to take charge of the fight and pound Richards with jabs and hooks.
Finally, he tagged him with a beautiful left hook to the head that staggered Richards and caused him to back up several steps. Witherspoon then went after him with zeal, tagging him with one big shot after another until finally the referee stepped in and halted the action at 1:29 of the round.