By Jim Dower: In a surprisingly easy victory, unbeaten #1 WBO challenger Oleksandr Usyk (10-0, 9 KOs) defeated World Boxing Organization cruiserweight champion Krzysztof Glowacki (26-1, 16 KOs) by a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision on Saturday night to capture his title in front of Glowacki’s own fans at the 119-109, 117-111, 117-111. Boxing News 24 scored the fight 10 rounds to 2 in favor of Usyk.
It was supposed to be a close affair, but the 29-year-old Usyk’s height, reach, speed and boxing ability was far too good for the 30-year-old Polish fighter Glowacki.
Usyk, a 2012 Olympic gold medalist from Ukraine, used his jab and movement to neutralize the power of the southpaw Glowacki in the early going. Glowacki was cut on the side of his right eye in the 3rd round from a clash of heads. The cut continued to bleed for the remainder of the contest.
Usyk started to let his hands go more starting in the 10th, as he was able to nail Glowacki was fast combinations that backed him up. Glowacki had been coming forward the entire fight and missing with his power shots, but the complexion of the fight changed in the 10th round on. It was now Usyk coming on more and more to nail Glowacki with punches from every angle, and Glowacki seemed both confused and uncomfortable.
The fight was close in the first rounds, as Glowacki was aggressive and landed some nice shots in rounds two and four. However, Usyk took over the contest completely from round five and started landing his jabs more and more, and nailing Glowacki with left hands as he was plodding forward.
In the later rounds, Usyk began to get ready confident and was hitting Glowacki at will with shots. At one point in the 10th, Usyk did the Ali shuffle while coming forward to nail Glowacki with a beautiful left hand to the head. To his credit, Glowacki kept trying to come forward to land his hard left hands, but he rarely was able to land anything. When Glowacki would land, it was mostly glancing shots that only partially connected. The only area where Glowacki had any success was in throwing to the body. He landed some decent body shots, but there wasn’t nearly enough of them go give Usyk any problems.
One got the sense that Usyk could have gotten a stoppage in the 11th and 12th rounds if he had pushed hard, because he was able to land some sustained combinations that had Glowacki helpless looking.
At point in the 11th, Glowacki turned his back on Usyk while he was getting hit with combinations. It was a real amateur move by Glowacki. It was fortunate that Usyk didn’t take advantage of his cowering style, because he could have nailed him in the back of the head. Instead, Usyk maneuvered around to the back of Glowacki to get in front of him to keep tagging him to the head. Glowacki had completely come apart mentally by that point in the fight. He had lost his senses completely and was in the retreat mode. You see that in the ring sometimes where a fighter loses mentally. Well, Glowacki lost it and was just fighting in an erratic matter that showed that he had come completely unglued under fire. It was kind of sad to see. After the performances Glowacki put in against Steve Cunningham and Marco Huck, we then see him come apart with an amateur hour performance against Usyk. It was ugly to watch.
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In other results on the card, heavyweight Andrzej Wawrzyk (33-1, 19 KOs) defeated high level journeyman Albert Sosnowski (49-7-2, 30 KOs) by a 6th round stoppage. The fight was halted at the start of round six. There wasn’t much to see in this fight from these two slow heavyweights. The 6’5″ Wawrzyk had his way with Sosnowski until the fight was mercifully halted.
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Undefeated junior middleweight Patrick Szymanski (17-0, 9 KOs) defeated Jose Antonio Villalobos (9-2-2, 5 KOs) by a narrow 10 round split decision to capture the vacant WBC Youth belt. The final judges’ scores were 95-94, 96-94 Szymanski, and 94-95 for Villalobos.