By Jim Dower: In an exciting fight, WBO cruiserweight champion Krzysztof Glowacki (26-0, 16 KOs) used his southpaw stance and powerful left hand to defeat 39-year-old former IBF cruiserweight champion Steve Cunningham (28-8-1, 13 KOs) by a 12 round unanimous decision on Saturday night at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
Glowacki knocked Cunningham down four times in the fight in dropping him twice in the 2nd, once in the 9th and a final time in the 12th. The judges scored the fight 116-108, 115-109 and 115-109.
Cunningham was knocked down on consecutive left hands in the 2nd round. It was surprising that Cunningham made it out of the round because Glowacki really had his number in that round.
In the 10th, Glowacki dropped Cunningham with a right elbow to the head. Cunningham wasn’t hurt through. It was more of a case of Glowacki landing a shot that had too much force for Cunningham to stay on his feet.
Cunningham went for broke in the 12th round, but was dropped with a left to the head.
In the 11th and 12th rounds, Cunningham wasted valuable time throwing shots to Glowacki’s body rather than going for his head. That was a clear mistake because Cunningham was already well behind in the fight from having been dropped several times, and he needed a knockout from a head shot, not a body shot. Cunningham wasn’t going to be able to KO a fighter as experienced as Glowacki with a body shot. The idea behind going to the body earlier in the fight would be to weaken Glowacki for the later rounds. However, Cunningham failed to do this. He was throwing to the head until the 11th round. It was a mistake for Cunningham to suddenly waste time throwing to the body in the last two rounds of the fight.
The loss for the 39-year-old Cunningham puts him in a situation where he’s going to need to consider what he wants to do with his career. He had the size advantage over Glowacki, but he couldn’t use it. You would have to assume that Cunningham will have similar problems against the other cruiserweight world champions like Denis Lebedev. Cunningham doesn’t have a lot of time to go slowly with his career. His management will need to get him another world title shot as soon as possible because he’s going to age out if they take things slowly. He doesn’t have years and years to wait around before he gets another shot at a title. But at this point, it’s hard to say that Cunningham deserves another world title shot.