By Dan Ambrose: NABF light heavyweight champion Oleksandr Gvozdyk (12-0, 10 KOs) defeated former light heavyweight world title challenger Isaac Chilemba (24-5-2, 10 KOs) in an 8th round injury stoppage on Saturday night at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. The fight was halted by Chilemba’s corner after the 8th round had ended due to a right arm injury from the 29-year-old fighter.
Things were not going well for Chilemba from the 3rd round, as Gvozdyk took over the fight with his left hooks to the head and his high punch volume. The 4th round was especially bad for Chilemba, as he was trapped against the ropes by the 29-year-old 2012 Olympian bronze medalist Gvozdyk and pummeled. Chilemba ended up with a bloody nose in that round, and he looked pretty discouraged as the round ended.
In rounds 5 and 6, Gvozdyk controlled the fight with his jabs and left hook. He was constantly attacking Chilemba, and taking advantage of his low work rate to get the better of him. However, the rounds were still close. It wasn’t as if Gvozdyk was totally dominating the action. Chilemba was still landing clean shots, and making it close. It was just that Gvozdyk was getting the better of the action by being busier.
Chilemba had a last stand in the 8th round in landing a lot of shots through the first half of the round. Gvozdyk came back with the harder punches in the second half to possibly steal the round. It was a close round.
After the 8th round ended, Chilemba’s trainer Roy Jones Jr. had the fight stopped due to his right arm injury.
All in all, it was a fairly impressive performance by Gvozdyk. He showed that he was the better fighter than Chilemba. However, it’s unclear at what point Chilemba suffered the arm injury. If the injury came early in the fight when he was getting the better of Gvozdyk, then it’s hard to give the Ukrainian much credit, because he did not look good in the first three rounds of the fight. It was only from the 4th that Gvozdyk took over the fight.
Based on this performance, I can’t say that Gvozdyk would beat the better light heavyweights like Sergey Kovalev, Andre Ward, Artur Beterbiev or Adonis Stevenson. I think all of those guys are better than him. Gvozdyk did show that he has good boxing skills tonight, but I don’t think he has enough to beat the best in the division. Gvozdyk’s promoters at Top Ran might as well match him with one of the champions in the 175lb division as soon as possible, because he’s not young enough to wait much longer before he fights for a title. It would be big news if Gvozdyk would fight for a title now, and it would help make a more popular fighter even if he gets knocked out, which is what I see happening to him if he fights Kovalev or Stevenson right now. I’d like to see how Gvozdyk does against Beterbiev before he fights for a world title. That would be a good test for Gvozdyk.