By Patrick McHugh: #2 WBC, #3 WBA Andrzej Fonara (28-3, 16 KOs) has a fight scheduled for tonight against Joe Smith Jr. (21-1, 17 KOs) on Premier Boxing Champions on NBC from the UIC Pavilion in Chicago, Illinois. Fonfara, 28, wants to beat Smith Jr., and then face WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis “Super Man” Stevenson (27-1, 22 KOs) in December so that he can avenge his loss to him from 2014.
Stevenson defeated Fonfara by a 12 round unanimous decision by the scores of 116-109, 115-110 and 115-110. The fight was mostly one-sided other than a knockdown Fonfara scored late in the contest. Stevenson dominated before and after the knockdown.
It’s hard to imagine Fonfara being able to do any better in the rematch than he did the first time. It looked like Stevenson became disinterested late in the fight because it was so one-sided. The knockdown seemed to wake Stevenson up, because he easily controlled the fight from that point on.
“It’s maybe a little bit (frustrating) but I have to do my job,” Fonfara said to ringtv.com. “The chance to fight Stevenson will come. I think Stevenson will beat (Thomas Williams) and maybe we can get the rematch in December. Stevenson doesn’t want to fight with me. I don’t know why. He chose Williams right now,” he added.
Stevenson will be defending his WBC title against #8 WBC Thomas Williams Jr. (20-1, 14 KOs) on July 29 at the Centre Videotron, in Quebec City, Quebec. Stevenson, 38, hasn’t been taking any risky opponents since winning the WBC title three years ago with a 1st round knockout win over Chad Dawson in 2013. Easily the toughest opponent out of the bunch for Stevenson was his 2014 fight against Fonfara.
I don’t think Stevenson – or anyone – for that matter saw Fonfara as being as good as he was going into that contest. That fight kind of established Fonfara as a good contender in the division. However, there are arguably better contenders than him such as Artur Beterbiev, Andre Ward, Eleider Alvarez, Vyacheslav Shabransky, Marcus Browne, and Dmitry Bivol.
Ward would likely beat Stevenson, and Beterbiev would have a very good chance of doing the same thing. Stevenson’s chin makes him succeptible to losing to younger guys with power. Fonfara probably isn’t a good enough pressure fighter to get Stevenson out of there.
To beat Stevenson, you would need to be able to triple up with your hooks the way Beterbiev does and you would need to maul him on the inside. Stevenson would get the better of most if not all of the top fighters in the division on the outside due to his superior hand speed. But at medium to close range, Stevenson isn’t nearly as good. He’s at his best when he’s got a guy on the outside where he can get the maximum wind up with his speedy punches.
Since his loss to Stevenson, Fonfara has won his last three contests, beating Doudou Ngumbu, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. and Nathan Cleverly. Fonfara beat Cleverly by a 12 round decision in a war last October at the UIC Pavilion. Both fighters stood and traded shots all night long. They combined for over 2500 punches thrown in the fight.
It was an incredible back and forth war. However, Fonfara had the better power on his shots, and this enabled him to win by the scores of 115-113, 116-112 and 116-112. It was a good performance by Fonfara, but it was also one that showed that he has major defensive flaws in his game that he needs to fix. If Fonfara wants to beat Stevenson in the rematch, then he can’t be getting hit as much.
Thankfully for Fonfara’s sake, Stevenson doesn’t throw 1000 punches per fight. He’s more of a pot shot type of fighter than a guy that will go out and throw 100 punches per round.
Tonight’s fight between Smith Jr. and Fonfara is seen as a mismatch. Smith has done nothing in his career that would suggest that he’ll be able to hang with Fonfara for any length of time. This is a PBC card, and unfortunately you see mismatches from time to time featuring the A-side fighter matched against a weak B-side fighter. Smith is the B-side opponent, and he’s way out of his class on paper. Smith was stopped in the fourth round by Eddie Caminero in 2010. Since then, Smith’s biggest win was against Will Rosinsky last December.