By Allan Fox: Undefeated super middleweight contender Edwin Rodriguez (24-0, 16 KO’s) never even gave Russian fighter Denis Grachev (13-2-1, 8 KO’s) a chance tonight in blowing him out in a 1st round TKO win at the Salle des etoiles, in Monte Carlo, Monaco.
Rodriguez knocked Grachev down twice in the round, and got the stoppage after nailing him with two hard looping right hands that nailed Grachev in the back of the head, causing him to stumble into the ropes. Referee Stanley Christodolou then halted the fight at 2:50 in seeing how badly Grachev was hurt.
Rodriguez wins $600,000 win this victory. No doubt the money on the line had Rodriguez fighting a lot harder than he’s shown in his recent fights. He’s not normally seen as a slugger, but tonight he went after Grachev and was nailing him with big shots.
At the start of the round, Rodriguez came out fast throwing a lot of looping right hands that either caught Grachev on the top or the back of this head. The punches were looping all the way around Grachev’s head to nail him in the back of the head, and that seemed to hurt him.
Rodriguez dropped Grachev with a looping right hand early in the round. Following that knockdown, Rodriguez unloaded on Grachev with shots to the head and body until knocking him down with a left hook to the head while Grachev was caught in the corner. When the action resumed, Rodriguez threw almost exclusively wide clubbing shots that didn’t look they were thrown with good form, but nonetheless with the area they were landing on the back of Grachev’s head, they badly hurt him.
—
Making his first defense of his WBA light welterweight title, champion Khabib Allakhverdiev (19-0, 9 KO’s) stopped #2 WBA Souleymane M’baye (40-5-1, 22 KO’s) in the 5th round. Allakhverdiev, 30, overwhelmed a tired and hurt M’Baye with a flurry of shots in the 11th round to get a stoppage at 2:27 of the round. M’Baye was knocked down in the 2nd and 8th rounds from big shots.
—
Other boxing action on the card:
Junior Makabu MD 12 Dmytro Kucher
Max Bursak UD 12 Prince Arron
Comments are closed.