By Dan Ambrose: Heavyweight contender Tomasz Adamek (46-2, 28 KO’s) had to really labor to win a 12 round decision against a one-armed Eddie Chambers (36-3, 18 KO’s) on Saturday night at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey. The three judges had the 35-year-old Adamek the winner by the scores of 116-112, 116-112 and 119-109.

I had Adamek winning by a narrow decision, but he looked worse than awful in this fight and he’s probably lucky that Chambers injured his left arm in the 2nd round. A healthy, non-rusty, Chambers would have likely beaten Adamek last night. As it is, Chambers came damn close to winning the fight while fighting with just his right hand. Chambers was forced to switch to southpaw each time he wanted to throw a jab, because his left arm was completely useless. Surprisingly, Chambers was very effective at quickly changing stances to land head shots.

A big part of the reason for Chambers’s success was because how slow Adamek was. Adamek has bulked up in his last two fights since losing to WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko in September 2011. The extra weight has made Adamek really slow and ponderous while at the same time doing nothing to help him in the power department. If anything, Adamek looked weaker than he was when he first moved up to the heavyweight division in October 2009. He weighed 214 back then and was much faster with better power. But the useless muscle that Adamek has put on has almost crippled his game.

He may have done enough to beat the 202 pound Chambers, who was coming off of a 16 month layoff, but it doesn’t take a genius to surmise that Adamek would be in deep, deep trouble if he were to fight some of the top heavyweight contenders rather than 2nd tier smallish fighters like Chambers. However, Adamek obviously isn’t going to fight anyone really good. He’s pretty much following the same route to a title shot that he used last time to get the fight against Vitali by taking on weaker 2nd tier opposition and waiting for a shot at the title.

Adamek will get a title shot eventually against one of the champions but he’s going to lose badly, especially if he fights at the weight he came into the Chambers fight. 225 lbs is too much weight for Adamek and it’s really slowed him down dramatically.