Photo credit: Pavel Terekhov – By Jason Kim: WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko (40-2, 38 KO’s) did what he had to do to take out the younger 31-year-old Alberto Sosnowski (45-2-1, 27 KO’s) in a 10th round TKO on Saturday night at the Veltins Arena, in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. The fight wasn’t in the least bit competitive because of the difference in size, skill and experience between the two fighters.

However, Sosnowski was a game fighter and he kept coming forward all fight long despite the constant jabs and left hooks he was having to eat from Vitali. For the most part, Klitschko took it easy on Sosnowski, rarely throwing hard right hands and seemingly fighting mostly with his jab and left hooks. For awhile there I wondered if Klitschko had hurt his right hand, as he was throwing so few of them.

However, Klitschko began to use his right hand starting in the 8th round when he began to load up chopping right hands. Sosnowski was hurt in the 9th from a big right and then taken out in the 10th with a whopper of a right that sent Sosnowski down. The bout was stopped at 2:20 of the 10th with Sosnowski still down on the canvas. It looked like Vitali held back after testing Sosnowski with right hands in the first two rounds.

During that time, Vitali landed single right hands that appeared to slightly hurt Sosnowski and cause him to back up. Instead of continuing to pour in rights, Vitali backed off and began to use exclusively his jab and left hook to control the fight. It was as if Vitali was gauging how well Sosnowski could deal with his right hand shots.

Once Vitali realized that he could hurt Sosnowski at a moment’s notice, he put his right hand power shots back in his tool chest and saved them up for later in the fight. In the meantime, Vitali dominated the 6’2” bodybuilder Sosnowski, jabbing him effectively to the head and landing short left hooks from the side. Vitali kept his left hand really low below his waist for the whole fight.

When Sosnowski could come forward, Vitali whip his left hand out and tag Sosnowski in the head or the body. Some of the times Vitali would miss with his short hooks. However, most of the time he was deadly accurate with his hooks, and effective at stopping Sosnowski from coming forward to try and land his shots Vitali looked like he really didn’t want to fight at too high of a pace, as if he was stringing the fight out longer for some reason.

Sosnowski showed pretty good hand speed, excellent movement and good power. For a fighter that has taken a lot of criticism for not being that good, he looked at least on par with recent Klitschko victims Samuel Peter, Juan Carlos Gomez and Chris Arreola. Sosnowski has some good skills and his power makes him more than a handful. He’s similar to Tomasz Adamek in fighting style, only with more power and not quite as much movement. That would a decent fight in the future for the two of those fighters, because I doubt the 6’1” Adamek would do any better against Vitali than Sosnowski did.

Vitali showed that he could dominate Sosnowski while fighting at what appeared to be half speed. Some people were less than impressed with Klitschko’s performance on Saturday night, but it showed how much better the guy is than anyone around. He rarely got hit in the fight and basically peppered Sosnowski with shots until he opened up with the big artillery in the 8th round.

Sosnowski was hurt in the 8th through 10th rounds, and cut on the side of his left eye. He looked pretty tired by the end of the fight because he had been trying to take the fight to Vitali from rounds one through seven. Vitali reversed this trend starting in the 8th and stalked and punished Sosnowski until the fight was eventually stopped in the 10th by referee Jay Nady.