By Jim Dower: In a surprise upset, 33-year-old former world title challenger Eric Molina (25-3, 19 KOs) used his youth and impressive punching power to knockout former two division world champion Tomasz Adamek (50-5, 30 KOs) in the 10th round of a scheduled 12 round fight on Saturday night to capture the vacant IBF Inter-Continental heavyweight title at the Tauron Arena in, Krakow, Poland.

Molina appeared to be trailing at the time in the 10th round when he landed a big right hand to the head of Adamek that sent the 39-year-old Polish fighter down on the canvas on his back. A badly hurt Adamek was able to get up at the count of nine, but the referee stopped the fight when he saw how hurt Adamek was at the time.

If the fight had been allowed to continue, Molina very likely would have finished Adamek off immediately. Molina was throwing very hard punches in the 10th round, and he seemed to realize that he needed a knockout to win. Adamek had controlled the previous nine rounds with his movement and his combination punching.

Molina wasn’t fighting aggressively like he needed to, and he wasn’t using his size to get the better of the smaller and older Adamek. However, Molina came out for the 10th round looking like a completely different fighter, as he went right after Adamek and punished him with shots early in the round.

Adamek got on his bike to try and escape the pressure that Molina was putting on him. It didn’t work for Adamek, because Molina was able to land a long right hand to the head to put him down. Adamek probably thought he was out of range of Molina’s punches, but the hard hitting Mexican fighter used his long reach to nail Adamek.

For Adamek, this was his third loss in his last four fights. If that’s not a sign that he needs to think about retiring from the sport than it’s hard to know what is.

If Molina had gone after Adamek hard in the first part of the fight like he did in the 10th, it’s quite possible that he would have knocked him out. Molina showed very impressive punching power when he finally started to go on the attack in the fight in a concerted manner. He was completely different fighter. In the earlier rounds, Molina kept backing up and giving Adamek far too much respect than he rated. Molina was basically fighting Adamek like he’d fought WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder last year.

Adamek doesn’t have that kind of punching power, and Molina was making the fight tougher than it should have been. Had Molina watched Adamek’s defeats against Artur Szpilka and Vyacheslav Glazkov, he would have known that the best way to beat Adamek is go directly at him by throwing heavy shots. Adamek doesn’t have the power or the chin to fight that kind of fight against a legitimate heavyweight. It’s good that Molina finally realized what he needed to do in order to get the victory, because it would have been a bad thing for his career to lose to the 39-year-old Adamek.

This defeat leaves Adamek in a tough position where he needs to ask himself some questions. H Adamek could try a really drastic move in taking off weight to get down to the cruiserweight limit of 200 pounds. Adamek would only need to trim down just a little to make the fight. He could dehydrate from 215 the week of his fights to make the 200lb limit, and then rehydrate up the night before the fight.