Robert Helenius vs. Gonzalo Omar Basile – Results

By Boxing News - 12/18/2016 - Comments

By Jim Dower: Heavyweight Robert Helenius (24-1, 15 KOs) defeated 42-year-old Argentinian journeyman Gonzalo Omar Basile (68–12, 31 KOs) by a 1st round knockout last Saturday night at the Hartwall Arena in Helsinki, Finland.

Basile never went down. He was hurt by a body shot moments into the fight, which resulted in referee Erkki Meronen giving him a standing eight count. Moments later, Helenius continued to nail Basile at will with power shots until the referee halted the fight with Basile cringing and bending over. The official time of the stoppage was at 0:48 of the 1st round.

When the fight started, Helenius moved forward and jabbed Basile repeatedly with slow jabs. Once Helenius was in punching range for his power shots, he started to land hard body shots with both hands. Basile looked clearly bothered by each body shot he was hit with.

However, Basile tried to come forward to land some shots of his own, but Helenius backed up and continued to hit him shots while retreating. Helenius then came forward and landed a big right uppercut that snapped Basile’s head back violently.

Helenius followed up with a right hook to the head that caused Basile to bend forward at the waist. The referee stepped in and gave Basile a standing eight count at the moment to help him collect himself and regroup. When the action resumed, Helenius continued to bang away at Basile with slow power shots to the head and body.

Once again, Basile bent forward in a cringing position. At this point the referee stopped the contest. Basile had never gone down in the fight. He also never landed a shot as far as I could tell. It was a total shutout for Helenius. It was also a sign that Helenius needs to start fighting better opposition than this, because he’s faced too many fighters of the same caliber as Basile during his eight year pro career, and he can’t afford to waste too much more time fighting 3rd tier journeyman.

It was a real bad mismatch of a fight. The 262 pound Helenius won his second straight fight since losing to Johann Duhaupas by a 6th round knockout earlier this year in April 2016. Helenius was knocked down twice by the light hitting Duhaupas in failing in a bid to win the vacant WBC Silver heavyweight title.

Helenius is probably good enough to give a lot of the top contenders in the heavyweight division problems when he’s in good shape. He wasn’t in great shape last night though. Helenius looked flabby, and not conditioned enough for him to beat any of talented heavyweights in the division. Helenius has only fought two decent heavyweights in his entire career in Dereck Chisora and Duhaupas. He beat Chisora by a controversial 12 round split decision in 2011, and lost to Duhaupas.

It would be nice to see Helenius moved up a level before it’s too late. His handlers need to start matching him against guys that fight back, because he looked in shock in his fight against Duhaupas when he threw punches back at him rather than just taking the shots the way that his poor opposition has done in his career.

Other results on the card:

Eva Wahlstrom UD 10 Anahi Esther Sanchez

Edis Tatli TKO 9 Manuel Lancia

Mariano Hilario KO 11 Niklas Rasanen

Dayron Lester TKO 1 Ivan Jakovljevic

Ken-Tore Halland TKO 3 Dimitri Faltin

Jesse Jouhki UD 4 Dimitrije Djordjevic

Oskari Metz UD 4 Marko Nastic 0 1 0